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Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2012 with funding from
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
http://www.archive.org/details/civilwarnarrativ02foot
The Civil War
A Narrative
ALL THESE WERE HONOURED IN THEIR GENERATIONS
AND WERE THE GLORY OF THEIR TIMES
THERE BE OF THEM
THAT HAVE LEFT A NAME BEHIND THEM
THAT THEIR PRAISES MIGHT BE REPORTED
AND SOME THERE BE WHICH HAVE NO MEMORIAL
WHO ARE PERISHED AS THOUGH THEY HAD NEVER BEEN
AND ARE BECOME AS THOUGH THEY HAD NEVER BEEN BORN
AND THEIR CHILDREN AFTER THEM
BUT THESE WERE MERCIFUL MEN
WHOSE RIGHTEOUSNESS HATH NOT BEEN FORGOTTEN
WITH THEIR SEED SHALL CONTINUALLY REMAIN
A GOOD INHERITANCE
AND THEIR CHILDREN ARE WITHIN THE COVENANT
THEIR SEED STANDETH FAST
AND THEIR CHILDREN FOR THEIR SAKES
THEIR SEED SHALL REMAIN FOR EVER
AND THEIR GLORY SHALL NOT BE BLOTTED OUT
THEIR BODIES ARE BURIED IN PEACE
BUT THEIR NAME LIVETH FOR EVERMORE
Ecclesiasticus xliv
THE
Civil War
*A
• • •
RED RIVER
to APPOMATTOX
* * *
By SHELBY FOOTE
RANDOM HOUSE • NEW YORK
Copyright © 1974 by Shelby Foote
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and
simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Foote, Shelby.
The Civil War.
CONTENTS.— 1 . Fort Sumter to Perryville.—
2. Fredericksburg to Meridian. — 3. Red River to
Appomattox.
1. United States — History — Civil War.
E468.F7 973.7 58-988
ISBN 0-394-465 1 2-1 (v. 3)
Manufactured in the United States of America
98765432
First Edition
^
CONTENTS
* x ■&
I
i . Another Grand Design 3
2. The Forty Days 146
3. Red Clay Minuet 318
11
4. War Is Cruelty ... 427
5. You Cannot Refine It 627
in
6.
A Tightening Noose
735
7-
Victory, and Defeat
802
8.
Lucifer in Starlight
LIST OF MAPS,
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE,
957
AND INDEX
1061
ir
I
#
CHAPTER
X f[ X
Another Grand Design
* X i*
LATE AFTERNOON OF A RAW, GUSTY DAY
in early spring — March 8, a Tuesday, 1 864 — the desk clerk at Will-
ard's Hotel, two blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White
House, glanced up to find an officer accompanied by a boy of thirteen
facing him across the polished oak of the registration counter and in-
quiring whether he could get a room. "A short, round-shouldered man
in a very tarnished major general's uniform," he seemed to a bystanding
witness to have "no gait, no station, no manner," to present instead, with
his ill-fitting jacket cut full in the skirt and his high-crowned hat set
level on his head, a somewhat threadbare, if not quite down-at-heels,
conglomerate impression of "rough, light-brown whiskers, a blue eye,
and rather a scrubby look withal ... as if he was out of office and on
half pay, with nothing to do but hang round the entry of Willard's,
cigar in mouth." Discerning so much of this as he considered worth his
time, together perhaps with the bystander's added observation that ti ;
applicant had "rather the look of a man who did, or once did, take a
little too much to drink," the clerk was no more awed by the stranger's
rank than he was attracted by his aspect. This was, after all, the best
known hostelry in Washington. There had been by now close to five
hundred Union generals, and of these the great majority, particularly
among those who possessed what was defined as "station," had checked
in and out of Willard's in the past three wartime years. In the course of
its recent and rapid growth, under the management of a pair of Vermont
brothers who gave it their name along with their concern, it had swal-
lowed whole, together with much other adjacent real estate, a former
Presbyterian church; the President-elect himself had stayed here through
the ten days preceding his inauguration, making of its Parlor 6 a "little
White House," and it was here, one dawn two years ago in one of its
upper rooms, that Julia Ward Howe had written her "Battle Hymn of
the Republic," the anthem for the crusade the new President had begun
[ 4 ] THE CIVIL WAR33" 1864
to design as soon as he took office. Still, bright or tarnished, stars were
stars; a certain respect was owed, if not to the man who wore them, then
in any case to the rank they signified; the clerk replied at last that he
would give him what he had, a small top-floor room, if that would do.
It would, the other said, and when the register was given its practiced
half-circle twirl he signed without delay. The desk clerk turned it back
again, still maintaining the accustomed, condescending air he was about
to lose in shock when he read what the weathered applicant had written:
"U.S. Grant & Son — Galena, Illinois."
Whereupon (for such was the aura that had gathered about the
name "Unconditional Surrender" Grant, hero of Donelson, conqueror
of Vicksburg, deliverer of Chattanooga) there was an abrupt transforma-
tion, not only in the attitude of the clerk, whose eyes seemed to start
from his head at the sight of the signature and who struck the bell with
a force that brought on the double all the bellboys within earshot, but
also in that of the idlers, the loungers roundabout the lobby, who soon
learned the cause of the commotion in the vicinity of the desk. It was as
if the prayers of the curious had been answered after the flesh. Here
before them, in the person of this undistinguished-looking officer —
forty-one years of age, five feet eight inches tall, and weighing just
under a hundred and forty pounds in his scuffed boots and shabby
clothes — was the man who, in the course of the past twenty-five
months of a war in which the news had mostly been unwelcome from
the Federal point of view, had captured two rebel armies, entire, and
chased a third clean out of sight beyond the roll of the southern horizon.
Now that he made a second visual assessment, more deliberate and above
all more informed than the first, the bystander who formerly had seen
only an "ordinary, scrubby-looking man, with a slightly seedy look,"
perceived that there was more to him than had been apparent before
the authentication that came with the fixing of the name. The "blue
eye" became "a clear blue eye," and the once stolid-seeming face took on
"a look of resolution, as if he could not be trifled with."
Such, then, was the effect of the gathered aura. And yet there was
a good deal more to it than fame, past or present. There was also anticipa-
tion, and of a particular national form. Just last week, on Leap Year
Day, the President had signed a congressional act reviving the grade
of lieutenant general, and Grant had been summoned east to receive in
person his promotion, together with command of all the armies of the
Union, which he was expected to lead at last to final victory over the
forces that had threatened its destruction. Forgotten now was the small
top-floor room his modesty had been willing to accept. Instead, the
clerk obsequiously tendered the distinguished guest "the best in the
house": meaning Parlor 6, where Abraham Lincoln himself had held
court in the days preceding his inauguration, less than one week more
than three years ago today.
Another Grand Design [ 5 ]
Grant accepted this as he had the other, with neither eagerness nor
protest, which caused a second witness to remark upon "his shy but
manly bearing." Still another even saw virtue in the dead-level way he
wore his hat. "He neither puts it on behind his ears, nor draws it over
his eyes; much less does he cock it on one side, but sets it straight and
very hard on his head." A fourth believed he detected something else
beneath the general's "rough dignity" of surface. "He habitually wears
an expression as if he had determined to drive his head through a brick
wall, and was about to do it." Just now though, here in the close
atmosphere of the lobby of Willard's — which a disgruntled English-
man complained was compounded, in about equal parts, of "heat, noise,
dust, smoke, and expectoration" — what he mainly seemed to desire was
an absence of fanfare.
But that was not to be. For a week now the town talk had been of
his imminent arrival, and now that the talkers had him within actual
reach they intended to make the most of him. Returning downstairs
presently for dinner in the main dining room, and holding his son Fred
by the hand as if for mutual reassurance, he managed to get as far as his
table and even to order the meal before he was recognized by a gentle-
man from New Orleans who came over for a handshake. Then, as be-
fore, all hope of privacy ended. Word of his presence "spread from
table to table," according to one who was there; "people got up and
craned their necks in an anxious endeavor to see 'the coming man.' "
This reached a climax when one of the watchers, unable to contain his
enthusiasm, mounted a chair and called — prematurely, for the promo-
tion had not yet been conferred — for "Three cheers for Lieutenant
General Grant!" These were given "in the most tremendous manner"
and were followed by a pounding that made the glasses and silverware
dance on the tables, "in the midst of which General Grant, looking very
much astonished and perhaps annoyed, rose to his feet, awkwardly rubbed
his mustache with his napkin, bowed, and resumed his seat." For a time,
good sense prevailed; "the general was allowed to eat in peace." But
when he rose again and began to make his way out, once more with his
son in tow, a Pennsylvania congressman took him in hand and began
a round of introductions. "This was his first levee," the witness added;
after which his retreat through the crowded lobby and up the staircase
to his rooms was characterized by "most unsoldierly blushing."
Hard as this was on a man who valued his privacy and was dis-
comfited by adulation, before the night was over he would find himself
at storm center of an even worse ordeal. Word of his arrival having
spread, he found on his return to Parlor 6 a special invitation to come by
the White House, presumably for a conference with the Commander
in Chief, whom he had never met although they both were from Illinois
and were by now the two most famous men in the country.
If he had known that the President's weekly receptions were held
[6] THE CIVIL WAR3sr 1864
on Tuesday evenings he would perhaps have postponed his call, but by
the time he completed the short walk up the avenue to the gates of the
executive mansion it was too late. He found himself being ushered up the
steps, through the foyer, down a corridor, and finally into the brightly
lighted East Room, where the reception was in full swing. The crowd,
enlarged beyond the norm tonight by the news that he would be there,
fell silent as he entered, then parted before him to disclose at the far end
of the room the tall form of Abraham Lincoln, who watched him ap-
proach, then put out a long arm for a handshake. "I'm glad to see you,
General," he said.
The crowd resumed its "stir and buzz"; there was a spattering of
applause and even "a cheer or two," which struck Navy Secretary
Gideon Welles as "rowdy and unseemly." Lincoln turned Grant over
to Secretary of State William H. Seward for presentation to Mrs
Lincoln, who took his arm for a turn round the room while her husband
followed at a distance, apparently much amused by the general's reaction
to being placed thus on display before a crowd that soon began to get
somewhat out of hand, surging toward him, men and women alike, for
a close-up look and a possible exchange of greetings. Grant "blushed like
a schoolgirl," sweating heavily from embarrassment and the exertion of
shaking the hands of those who managed to get nearest in the jam.
"Stand up so we can all have a look at you!" someone cried from the
rim of the crowd, and he obliged by stepping onto a red plush sofa, look-
ing out over the mass of upturned faces whose eyes fairly shone with
delight at being part of an authentic historical tableau. "It was the only
real mob I ever saw in the White House," a journalist later wrote,
describing how "people were caught up and whirled in the torrent which
swept through the great East Room. Ladies suffered dire disaster in the
crush and confusion; their laces were torn and crinolines mashed, and
many got up on sofas, chairs, and tables to be out of harm's way or to
get a better view of the spectacle. . . . For once at least the President of
the United States was not the chief figure in the picture. The little, scared-
looking man who stood on a crimson-covered sofa was the idol of the
hour."
Rescued from this predicament — or, as the newsman put it,
"smuggled out by friendly hands" — Grant presently found himself
closeted in a smaller chamber, which in time he would learn to identify
as the Blue Room, with the President and the Secretary of War, Edwin
M. Stanton. Lincoln informed him that he would be given his lieutenant
general's commission at a ceremony here next day and would be ex-
pected to reply to a short speech, "only four sentences in all, which I
will read from my manuscript as an example which you may follow . . .
as you are perhaps not so much accustomed to public speaking as I
am." For guidance in preparing his reply, he gave him a copy of what
he himself would say, together with two suggestions for remarks which
Another Grand Design [ y ]
he hoped the general would incorporate in his response: first, something
that would "prevent or obviate any jealousy" on the part of the generals
about to come under his command, and second, something that would
put him "on as good terms as possible with the Army of the Potomac,"
to which he was a stranger. "If you see any objection to doing this,"
Lincoln added as a final sign of consideration for a man about to be
cast in an unfamiliar role, "be under no restraint whatever in expressing
that objection to the Secretary of War."
Grant expressed no objection, but as he returned to the hotel after
midnight for his first sleep in Washington he was perhaps regretful that
he had ever left the West, where life was at once less pushy and more
informal, and convinced no doubt of the wisdom of his resolution to go
back there at the first opportunity.
Returning next day to the White House for the ceremony that
would correspond to a laying-on of hands, he brought with him his chief
of staff and fellow townsman, Brigadier General John Rawlins, who
had come east with him from Nashville in response to the presidential
summons, and the thirteen-year-old Fred. Promptly at i o'clock, as
scheduled, the Galena trio was shown into the presence of the President,
the seven members of his Cabinet, his private secretary John Nicolay,
and Major General Henry W. Halleck, the present general-in-chief,
over whose head the man they had gathered to honor was about to be
advanced. Facing Grant, Lincoln handed him the official document and
read the speech of which he had given him a copy the night before.
"General Grant: The nation's appreciation of what you have done and
its reliance upon you for what remains to do in the existing great struggle
are now presented with this commission, constituting you lieutenant
general in the Army of the United States. With this high honor devolves
upon you also a corresponding responsibility. As the country herein
trusts you, so under God it will sustain you. I scarcely need to add that
with what I here speak for the nation goes my own hearty personal
concurrence." Brief as this was, Grant's response was briefer by seven
words. He took from his coat pocket a half -sheet of notepaper covered
with a hasty lead-pencil scrawl. Either the light was poor or else he had
trouble reading his own writing. In any case he read it badly. "Mr
President," he replied, groping and hesitant as he strained to decipher the
words: "I accept this commission with gratitude for the high honor con-
ferred. With the aid of the noble armies that have fought on so many
fields, it will be my earnest endeavor not to disappoint your expecta-
tions. I feel the full weight of the responsibilities now devolving on me
and know that if they are met it will be due to those armies, and above
all to the favor of that Providence which leads both nations and men."
The surprise in this, to anyone aware of the Blue Room exchange
the night before, was that the general had not incorporated either of the
remarks the President recommended for inclusion in his acceptance
THE CIVIL WAR35T1864
speech. Nicolay, for one, thought that Grant, in an attempt to establish
an independence none of his predecessors had enjoyed, had decided it
would be wise to begin his career as general-in-chief by disregarding
any suggestions from above. Lincoln himself, on the other hand, seemed
not to notice the omission which his secretary considered, if not a down-
right act of insubordination, then in any case a snub.
Once the congratulations were over, the two leaders had a short
talk that began with Grant asking what special service was required
of him. The taking of Richmond, Lincoln said, adding wryly that the
generals who had been told this in the past "had not been fortunate in
their efforts in that direction." Did Grant think he could do it? Grant
replied that he could if he had the troops, whereupon Lincoln assured
him that he would have them. That ended their first strategy conference,
such as it was, and Nicolay observed that nothing was said as to the
route or method to be employed, the jump-off date, or the amount of
time the operation would require. All Grant said was that he could
take Richmond if he had the troops, and Lincoln had been willing to let
it go at that; after which the general took his leave. He was going down
to Virginia today, specifically to Brandy Station, headquarters of the
Army of the Potomac, for a consultation with its commander as a prel-
ude to the planning of his over-all campaign.
One thing remained to be done before he got aboard the train. No
truly recognizable photograph had been made of him since the early
days of the war, when his beard reached the middle buttons on his
blouse, and he had agreed — perhaps without considering that he thus
would lose the near-anonymity he had enjoyed among strangers up to
now — to an appointment that would remedy the lack. Accompanied by
Stanton, who proposed to go to the station to see him off, he rode from
the White House, down Pennsylvania Avenue, to the intersection of
Seventh Street, where the carriage stopped in front of Mathew Brady's
Portrait Gallery. The photographer was waiting anxiously, and wasted
no time in getting the general upstairs into what he called his "operating
room," where he had four of his big cameras ready for action. It was
past 4 o'clock by now and the light was failing; so while Grant took his
place in a chair on which the cameras, their lenses two full feet in length
and just under half a foot in diameter, were trained like a battery of
siege guns, Brady sent an assistant up on the roof to draw back the shade
from the skylight directly overhead. To his horror, the fellow stumbled,
both feet crashing through the glass to let fall a shower of jagged shards
around the general below. "It was a miracle that some of the pieces
didn't strike him," the photographer later said. "And if one had, it
would have been the end of Grant; for that glass was two inches thick."
Still more surprising, in its way, was the general's reaction. He glanced
up casually, with "a barely perceptible quiver of the nostril," then as
Another Grand Design [ 9 ]
casually back down, and that was all. This seemed to Brady "the most
remarkable display of nerve I ever witnessed."
It was otherwise with Stanton, who appeared unstrung: not only
for Grant's sake, as it turned out, but also for his own, though none of
the splinters had landed anywhere near him. Grasping the photographer
by the arm, he pulled him aside and sputtered excitedly, "Not a word
about this, Brady, not a word! You must never breathe a word of what
happened here today. ... It would be impossible to convince the people
that this was not an attempt at assassination!"
The train made good time from Alexandria, chuffing through
Manassas and Warrenton Junction, on to Brandy, a distance of just
under sixty miles; Grant arrived in a driving rain, soon after nightfall,
to find that the Army of the Potomac, whatever its shortcomings in other
respects — there was scarcely a place-name on the landscape that did not
mark the scene of one or more of its defeats — knew how to greet a
visitor in style. A regiment of Zouaves, snappy in red fezzes and baggy
trousers, was drawn up to give him a salute on his arrival, despite the
rain, and a headquarters band, happily unaware that Grant was tone-
deaf — he once remarked that he only knew two tunes in all: "One was
Yankee Doodle. The other wasn't" — played vigorous music by way of
welcome as the army commander, Major General George G. Meade,
emerged from his tent for a salute and a handshake. He and Grant, six
years his junior and eight years behind him at West Point, had not met
since the Mexican War, sixteen years ago, when they were lieutenants.
Tall and dour, professorial in appearance, with a hook nose, a
gray-shot beard, glinting spectacles, and heavy pouches under his eyes,
Meade was one of the problems that would have to be dealt with before
other, larger problems could be tackled. Specifically, the question was
whether to keep him where he was, a prima donna commander of a
prima donna army, or remove him. His trouble, aside from a hair-trigger
temper that kept his staff on edge and caused associates to refer to him,
behind his back, as "a damned old goggle-eyed snapping turtle," was that
he lacked the quality which Grant not only personified himself but also
prized highest in a subordinate: the killer instinct. At Gettysburg eight
months ago, after less than a week in command, Meade had defeated
and driven the rebel invaders from his native Pennsylvania, but then,
with his foe at bay on the near bank of a flooded, bridgeless river, had
flinched from delivering the coup de grace which Lincoln, for one, was
convinced would have ended the war. Instead, the Confederates, low on
ammunition and bled down to not much more than half their strength,
had withdrawn unmolested across the rain-swollen Potomac to take
up a new defensive position behind the Rapidan, where they still were.
Meade had crossed in late November, with the intention of coming to
[io] THE CIVIL WAR3B- 1864
grips with them in the wintry south-bank thickets, but then at the last
minute had held his hand; had returned, in fact, ingloriously to the north
bank, and ever since had seemed content to settle for the stalemate that
resulted, despite practically unremittent prodding from the press and
the politicians in his rear. Just last week he had been grilled by Congress's
radical-dominated Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, whose
members for the most part, in admiration of his politics and his bluster,
favored recalling Major General Joseph Hooker to the post he had
lost to Meade on the eve of Gettysburg. Much bitterness had ensued
between the Pennsylvanian and his critics; "My enemies," he called
them in a letter this week to a kinsman, maintaining that they consisted
"of certain politicians who wish me removed to restore Hooker; then
of certain subordinates, whose military reputations are involved in the
destruction of mine; finally, [of] a class of vultures who in Hooker's
day preyed upon the army, and who sigh for a return of those glorious
days." "
This was accurate enough, as far as it went, but it seemed to
Grant — as, indeed, it must have done to even a casual observer — that
the trouble lay deeper, in the ranks of the army itself. Partly the reason
was boredom, a lack of employment in the craft for which its members
had been trained. "A winter in tents is monotonous," one officer com-
plained. "Card playing, horse racing, and kindred amusements become
stale when made a steady occupation." Moreover, Grant would have
agreed with an assessment later made by a young West Pointer, a new-
comer like himself to the eastern theater, that the trouble with the Army
of the Potomac, predating both Meade and Hooker, was its "lack of
springy formation and audacious, self-reliant initiative. This organic
weakness was entirely due to not having had in its youth skillfully ag-
gressive leadership. Its early commanders had dissipated war's best elixir
by training it into a life of caution, and the evil of that schooling it had
shown on more than one occasion."
Before coming down to Brandy, Grant had rather inclined to the
belief that the removal of Meade was a prerequisite to correction of this
state of mind in the army he commanded. But once the round of greetings
and introductions had ended and the corps and division commanders had
retired for the night, leaving the two men alone for a private conference,
Meade showed Grant a side of himself that proved not only attractive
but disarming. He began by saying that he supposed Grant would want
to replace him with some general who had served with him before and
was therefore familiar with his way of doing things: Major General
William T. Sherman, for example, who had been Grant's mainstay in
practically all of his campaigns to date. If so, Meade declared, he hoped
there would be no hesitation on his account, since (as Grant paraphrased
it afterwards) "the work before us was of such vast importance to the
whole nation that the feeling or wishes of no one person should stand in
Another Grand Design [ 1 1 ]
the way of selecting the right men for all positions. For himself, he
would serve to the best of his ability wherever placed." Grant was im-
pressed. The offer, he said, gave him "even a more favorable opinion of
Meade than did his great victory at Gettysburg," and he assured him,
then and there, that he had "no thought of substituting anyone for him,"
least of all Sherman, who "could not be spared from the West." Now it
was Meade who was impressed, and he said as much the following day
in a letter to his wife. "I was much pleased with Grant," he wrote,
"and most agreeably disappointed in his evidence of mind and character.
You may rest assured he is not an ordinary man."
Mutual admiration on the part of the two leaders might be a good
and healthy thing for all concerned, but the troops themselves, having
paid in blood for the blasting of a number of overblown reputations in
the drawn-out course of the war, were unconvinced and noncommittal.
While this latest addition to the doleful list of their commanders was on
his way eastward, they had engaged in some rather idle speculation as to
his professional ability, and it did not seem to them that the mere addition
of a third star to each of his shoulders would necessarily increase his
military worth.
"Who's this Grant that's made a lieutenant general?"
"He's the hero of Vicksburg."
"Well, Vicksburg wasn't much of a fight. The rebs were out of
rations and they had to surrender or starve. They had nothing but dead
mules and dogs to eat, as I understand."
About the best thing they could say for him was that he was
unlikely to be any worse than John Pope, who had also brought a west-
ern reputation east, only to lose it at Bull Run. "He cannot be weaker or
more inefficient," a jaundiced New York veteran declared, "than the
generals who have wasted the lives of our comrades during the past
three years." For one thing, Grant was likely to find a good deal less
room between bullets here in Virginia than he had found in the region
of his fame. "If he's a fighter," another hard-case infantryman put it,
"he can find all the fighting he wants." Then he arrived and some of
them got a look at him. What they saw was scarcely reassuring.
"Well, what do you think?" one asked a friend, who replied
thoughtfully, having studied the firm-set mouth and the level glance
of the clear blue eyes:
"He looks as if he meant it."
Nodding agreement, the first allowed that they would find out for
themselves before too long. Meanwhile he was willing to defer judg-
ment, except as to looks. "He's a little 'un," he said.
Talk of Vicksburg brought on the inevitable comparison of
western and eastern Confederates, with particular reference to the
presence here in the Old Dominion of General Robert E. Lee, the
South's first soldier. Grant could never have penned up Lee, as he had
[ 12 ] THE CIVIL WAR3T 1864
done John Pemberton, thereby forcing his surrender by starvation; Lee,
they said, "would have broken out some way and foraged around for
supplies." Thus the men. And Rawlins, as he moved among the officers
on Meade's staff, found a similar respect for the southern commander,
as if they took almost as great a pride in having opposed "Mars Robert"
as the Virginian's tattered veterans took in serving under him. "Well,
you never met Bobby Lee and his boys," they replied when Grant's
chief of staff presumed to speak of victories in the West. "It would be
quite different if you had." As for the campaign about to open here in
the East, they seemed to expect nothing more than another version of
the old story: advance and retreat, Grant or no Grant. They listened
rather impatiently while Rawlins spoke of past successes, off on the far
margin of the map. "That may be," they said. "But, mind you, Bobby
Lee is just over the Rapidan."
In any case, whatever opinions had been formed or deferred, the
new chieftain and his major eastern army had at least had a look at each
other, and next morning, after a second conference at which both past
and future campaigns in Virginia were discussed, Grant returned to the
station and got aboard the train for Washington. Last night he had re-
ceived a presidential telegram extending an invitation from Mrs Lincoln
for him and Meade "to dine with us Saturday evening," and he had re-
plied by wire that they were pleased to accept. Overnight, however, he
changed his mind. Today was Friday, March 1 1, and he would be leav-
ing at once for the West — but only for a visit of a week or ten days, in
order to confer with Sherman and other commanders there; after which,
despite his previous resolution to avoid the political snares so thickly
strewn about the eastern theater, he would be returning here to stay.
Paradoxically, now that he had seen them at first hand, it was just those
snares that determined his decision. "When I got to Washington and
saw the situation," he later explained, "it was plain that here was the
point for the commanding general to be. No one else could, probably,
resist the pressure that would be brought to bear upon him to desist
from his own plans and pursue others."
Not that the adulation and the invasions of his privacy did not
continue to go against his grain. They did indeed. Closeted that after-
noon with the President at the White House, he complained that the past
three days, in Washington and at Brandy, had been "rather the warmest
campaign I have witnessed during the war." Lincoln could sympathize
with this, but he was disappointed that the general would not stay on
through tomorrow night for the banquet planned in his honor. "We can't
excuse you," he protested. "Mrs Lincoln's dinner without you would
be Hamlet with Hamlet left out." But Grant was firm. "I appreciate the
honor Mrs Lincoln would do me," he said, "but time is very important
now. And really, Mr Lincoln," he added frankly, "I have had enough
of this show business."
Another Grand Design [ 13 ]
He left that evening on a westbound train, with stops for inspec-
tion at several points along the way, and reached Nashville in time to
keep a St Patrick's Day appointment with Sherman, whose troops were
advanced beyond Chattanooga, into northwest Georgia, to confront
the main western Confederate army under General Joseph E. Johnston,
around Dalton. They traveled together by rail to Cincinnati, the voluble
red-head, "tall, angular, and spare, as if his superabundant energy had
consumed his flesh" — so an acquaintance saw him at the time — and
the new lieutenant general, who had once been described as "a man who
could be silent in several languages" and who now seemed doubly
reticent by contrast with his talkative companion. In the Ohio city they
left the cars and checked into a hotel for privacy and room to spread their
maps. There they worked on a preliminary draft of the over-all cam-
paign which Sherman defined long afterwards: "He was to go for Lee
and I was to go for Joe Johnston. That was his plan."
That was what it basically was. That was what it came to, in the
end. At the outset, however, the plan — which might better have been
defined, at this stage, as a plan for a plan — was a good deal more com-
plicated, involving a great many other forces that were thrown, or
were intended to be thrown, into action against the South. Grant had
under him more than half a million combat soldiers, "present for duty,
equipped," about half of them in the ranks of six field armies, three in
the East and three in the West, while the other half were scattered about
the country in nineteen various departments, from New England to
New Mexico and beyond. His notion was to pry as many as possible
of the latter out of their garrisons, transfer them to the mobile forces in
the field, and bring the resultant mass to bear in "a simultaneous move-
ment all along the line." Long ago in Mexico, during a lull in the war,
he had written home to the girl he later married: "If we have to fight,
I would like to do it all at once and then make friends." Apparently he
felt even more this way about it now that the enemy were his fellow
countrymen. In any case, the plan as he evolved it seemed to indicate as
much.
"From an early period of the rebellion," he said afterward, looking
back, "I had been impressed with the idea that active and continuous
operations of all the troops that could be brought into the field, regard-
less of season and weather, were necessary to a speedy termination of the
war." The trouble from the outset, east and west, was that the Federal
armies had "acted independently and without concert, like a balky
team, no two ever pulling together, enabling the enemy to use to great
advantage his interior lines of communication." It was this that had made
possible several of the greatest Confederate triumphs, from First Bull
Run to Chickamauga, where reinforcements from other rebel depart-
ments and even other theaters had tipped the tactical scale against the
[i 4 ] THE CIVIL WAR3T1864
Union. "I determined to stop this," Grant declared. Moreover, con-
vinced as he was "that no peace could be had that would be stable and
conducive to the happiness of the people, both North and South, until
the military power of the rebellion was entirely broken," he held fast to
his old guideline; he would work toward Unconditional Surrender. He
had it very much in mind to destroy not only the means of resistance by
his adversaries, but also the will. The Confederacy was not only to be
defeated, it was to be defeated utterly, and not only in the field, where
the battles were fought, but also on the home front, where the goods of
war were produced. "War is cruelty," Sherman had said four months
ago, in response to a southern matron's complaint that his men appeared
hardhanded on occasion. "There is no use trying to reform it. The
crueler it is, the sooner it will be over." Grant felt much the same way
about the matter, and here at the start, in formulating his plan for achiev-
ing what he called "a speedy termination," he was determined to be
guided by two principles of action: i) "to use the greatest number of
troops practicable," and 2) "to hammer continuously against the armed
force of the enemy and his resources, until by mere attrition, if in no
other way, there should be nothing left to him but an equal submission
with the loyal section of our common country to the Constitution and
the laws of the land."
To achieve the first of these, the concentration of fighting men on
the actual firing line, he proposed that most of the troops now scattered
along the Atlantic coast, in Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas, be
brought to Virginia for a convergent attack on Richmond and the army
posted northward in its defense. All down the littoral, various forces
of various sizes were attempting to make their way toward various
objectives, few if any of them vital to Grant's main purpose. Accord-
ingly, he prepared orders for abandoning all such efforts south of the
James, along with as much of the region so far occupied as was not
clearly needed to maintain or strengthen the naval blockade. The same
would apply in the West, along the Mississippi River from New Orleans
to Cairo, where the men thus gained were to be employed in a similar
convergence upon Atlanta and the forces likewise posted in its defense.
As for the troops held deep in the national rear, serving mainly by their
numbers to justify the lofty rank of political or discredited generals as-
signed to duty there, Grant proposed to abolish some of these commands
by merging superfluous departments, thus freeing the men for duty at
the front. As for the generals themselves, useless as most of them were
for combat purposes, he favored their outright dismissal, which would
open the way for just that many promotions in the field. Though this
last was rather a ticklish business, verging as it did on the political, he
thought it altogether worth a try because of the added opportunities it
would afford him to reward the ablest and bravest of his subordinate
commanders, even before the fighting got under way, and thus incite the
Another Grand Design [ 15 ]
rest to follow their example. By such methods (though little came of the
last; out of more than a hundred generals Grant recommended for re-
moval, Lincoln let no more than a handful go, mindful as he had to be of
the danger of making influential enemies with the presidential election
less than nine months off) he would reduce the ratio of garrison to com-
bat troops from one-to-one to one-to-two, which in itself was a con-
siderable accomplishment, one that no previous general-in-chief, from
Winfield Scott through George McClellan to Henry Halleck, had con-
ceived to be possible even as a goal.
As for his method of employing that continuous hammering
which he believed was the surest if not the only way to bring the South
to her knees, the key would be found in orders presently issued to the
commanders involved: "So far as practicable all the armies are to move
together, and toward one common center." This was to be applied in
two stages. West and East, there would be separate but simultaneous
convergences upon respective goals, Atlanta and Richmond, by all the
mobile forces within each theater; after which, the first to be successful
in accomplishing that preliminary task — the reduction of the assigned
objective, along with the defeat of the rebel army charged with its de-
fense — would turn east or west, as the case might be, to join the other
and thus be in on the kill, the "speedy termination" for which Grant
had conceived his grand design. It was for this, the western half of it at
least, that he had come to Tennessee to confer with Sherman, his suc-
cessor in command of the largest of the three main armies in this and
the enormous adjoining theater beyond the Mississippi.
There the commanders of the Departments of the Gulf and
Arkansas, Major Generals Nathaniel P. Banks and Frederick Steele, were
engaged in the opening phase of a campaign of which Grant disap-
proved and which they themselves had undertaken reluctantly on orders
from Lincoln, issued through Halleck before Grant was given over-all
command. Advancing on Shreveport by way of Red River, which
would afford them gunboat support, they were charged with the in-
vasion and conquest of East Texas, not because there was much of
strategic importance there, but because of certain machinations by the
French in Mexico, which Lincoln thought it best to block by the oc-
cupation of Texas, thus to prevent a possible link-up between the forces
of Napoleon III and those of the Confederacy, with which that monarch
was believed to be sympathetic. Grant opposed the plan, not because
of its international implications, of which he knew little and understood
less, but because of its interference with, or in any case its nonfurther-
ance of, his design for ending the rebellion by concentrating "the great-
est number of troops practicable" against its military and manufacturing
centers. None of these was in the Lone Star State, so far at least as he
could see, or for that matter anywhere else in the Transmississippi, which
he preferred to leave to the incidental attention of Steele alone, while
[i6] THE CIVIL WAR3B"1864
Banks moved eastward, across the Mississippi, to play a truly vital role
in the drama now being cast. Yet here he was, not only moving in the
opposite direction, but taking with him no less than 10,000 of Sherman's
best soldiers, temporarily assigned by Halleck to assist him in seizing
the Texas barrens. Grant found this close to intolerable, and though he
could not directly countermand an order issued by authority of the
Commander in Chief, he could at least set a limit to the extent of the
penetration and, above all, to the amount of time allowed for the
execution of the order, and thus ensure that Sherman would get his
veterans back in time for the opening of the offensive in northwest
Georgia. Accordingly, two days before Sherman joined him in Nash-
ville on March 17, he wrote to Banks informing him that, while he re-
garded "the success of your present move as of great importance in re-
ducing the number of troops necessary for protecting the navigation
of the Mississippi River," he wanted him to "commence no move for the
further acquisition of territory" beyond Shreveport, which, he em-
phasized, "should be taken as soon as possible," so that, leaving Steele to
hold what had been won, he himself could return with his command to
New Orleans in time for the eastward movement Grant had in mind
for him to undertake in conjunction with Sherman's advance on Atlanta.
Above all, Banks was told, if it appeared that Shreveport could not be
taken before the end of April, he was to return Sherman's 10,000
veterans by the middle of that month, "even if it leads to the abandon-
ment of the main object of your expedition."
Sherman's own instructions, as stated afterward by Grant in his
final report, were quite simple and to the point. He was "to move
against Johnston's army, to break it up, and go into the interior of the
enemy's country as far as he could, inflicting all the damage he could
upon their war resources." For the launching of this drive on the Con-
federate heartland — admittedly a large order — the Ohioan would have
the largest army in the country, even without the troops regrettably de-
tached to Banks across the way. It included, in fact, three separate armies
combined into one, each of them under a major general. First, and largest,
there was George Thomas's Army of the Cumberland, badly whipped
six months ago at Chickamauga, under Major General William S. Rose-
crans, but reinforced since by three divisions from Meade for the
Chattanooga breakout under Thomas, which had thrown General
Braxton Bragg back on Dalton and caused his replacement by Joe
Johnston. Next there was the Army of the Tennessee, veterans of
Donelson and Shiloh under Grant, of Vicksburg and Missionary Ridge
under Sherman, now under James B. McPherson, who had been pro-
moted to fill the vacancy created by Sherman's advancement to head the
whole. Finally there was the Army of the Ohio, youngest and smallest
of the three, takers of Knoxville and survivors of the siege that followed
under Major General Ambrose Burnside, who was succeeded now by
Another Grand Design [ 17 ]
John M. Schofield, lately transferred from guerilla-torn Missouri. Made
up in all of twenty infantry and four cavalry divisions, these three armies
comprised the Military Division of the Mississippi under Sherman, re-
doubtable "Uncle Billy" to the 120,000 often rowdy western veterans on
its rolls. This was considerably better than twice the number reported to
be with Johnston around Dalton, but the defenders had a reserve force
of perhaps as many as 20,000 under Lieutenant General Leonidas Polk
at Demopolis, Alabama, and Meridian, Mississippi, in position to be
hastened by rail either to Mobile or Atlanta, whichever came under pres-
sure in the offensive the North was expected to open before long.
That was where Banks came in; that was why Grant had been so
insistent that the Massachusetts general finish up the Red River opera-
tion without delay, in order to get his army back to New Orleans for an
eastward march with 35,000 soldiers against Mobile, which would also
be attacked from the water side by Rear Admiral David G. Farragut,
whose Gulf squadron would be strengthened by the addition of several
of the ironclads now on station outside Charleston, where the naval
attack had stalled and which, in any case, was no longer on the agenda
of targets to be hit. This double danger to Mobile would draw Polk's
reserve force southward from Meridian and Demopolis, away from
Atlanta and any assistance it might otherwise have rendered Johnston
in resisting Sherman's steamroller drive on Dalton and points south.
Later, when Banks and Sherman had achieved their primary goals, the
reduction of Mobile and Atlanta, they would combine at the latter place
for a farther penetration, eastward to the Atlantic and Lee's rear, if Lee
was still a factor in the struggle by that time. "All I would now add,"
Grant told Banks in a follow-up letter sent two weeks after the first,
"is that you commence the concentration of your forces at once. Pre-
serve a profound secrecy of what you intend doing, and start at the
earliest possible moment."
Such, then, was the nature of the offensive Grant intended to
launch in the West, with Sherman bearing the main tactical burden.
Similarly in the East, in accordance with his general plan "to concentrate
all the force possible against the Confederate armies in the field," he
planned for Meade to move in a similar manner, similarly assisted by a
diversionary attack on the enemy rear. But he wanted it made clear
from the start that this was to be something more than just another "On
to Richmond" drive, at least so far as Meade himself was concerned.
"Lee's army will be your objective point," his instructions read.
"Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also."
If past experience showed anything, it clearly showed that in
Virginia almost anything could happen. Moreover, with Lee in opposi-
tion, that anything was likely to be disastrous from the Federal point
of view. Four of the fivt offensives so far launched against him — those
by A4cClellan, by Pope, by Burnside, by Hooker — had broken in
[18] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
blood and ended in headlong blue retreat, while the fifth — Meade's
own, the previous fall — had managed nothing better than a stalemate;
which last, in the light of Grant's views on the need for unrelenting
pressure, was barely preferable to defeat. Numerical odds had favored
the Union to small avail in those encounters, including Hooker's three-
to-one advantage, yet that was a poor argument against continuing to
make them as long as possible. Just now, as a result of the westward de-
tachments in September, the Army of the Potomac was down to fewer
than one hundred thousand men. By way of lengthening the odds, Grant
proposed to bring unemployed Ambrose Burnside back east to head a
corps of four newly raised divisions which would rendezvous at An-
napolis, thus puzzling the enemy as to their eventual use, down the
coast or in Virginia proper, until the time came for the Rapidan crossing,
when they would move in support of the Army of the Potomac, raising
its strength to beyond 120,000 effectives, distributed among fifteen in-
fantry and three cavalry divisions.
Such assurance as this gave was by no means certain. Lee was foxy.
No mere numerical advantage had served to fix him in position for
slaughter in the past. But Grant had other provisions in mind for secur-
ing that result, involving the use of the other two eastern armies. In the
West, the three mobile forces had three separate primary assignments:
going for Johnston, taking Mobile, riding herd on Transmississippi
rebels. In the East, all three were to have the same objective from the
start.
Posted in defense of West Virginia and the Maryland-Pennsylvania
frontier, the smallest of these three armies was commanded by Major
General Franz Sigel; "I fights mit Sigel" was the proud boast of thou-
sands of soldiers, German-born like himself, who had been drawn to
the colors by his example. This force was not available for use else-
where, since its left lay squarely athwart the northern entrance to the
Shenandoah Valley, that classic avenue of Confederate invasion ex-
ploited so brilliantly two years ago by Stonewall Jackson, who had used
it to play on Lincoln's fears, thereby contributing largely to the frustra-
tion of McClellan's drive on Richmond at a time when the van of his
army could hear the hours struck by the city's public clocks. To Grant,
however, the fact that Sigel's 26,000 troops were not considered with-
drawable, lest another rebel general use the Valley approach to serve him
as Stonewall had served Little Mac, did not mean that this force was not
usable as part of the drive on the Virginia capital and the gray army
charged with its defense. It seemed to him, rather, that a movement up
the Valley by a major portion of Sigel's command would serve even
better than an immobile guard, posted across its northern entrance — or
exit — to deny it to the enemy as a channel of invasion. Elaborating on
this, he directed that the advance was to be in two columns, one under
Brigadier General George Crook, who would march west of the
Another Grand Design [ 19 ]
Alleghenies for a rapid descent on the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad,
along which vital supply line he would move eastward, tearing up track
as he went, then north for a meeting near Staunton with Sigel himself,
who would have led the other column directly up the Valley. There
they would combine for a strike at Lee's flank while Meade engaged
his front; or if by then Lee had fallen back on Richmond, as expected,
they would join in the pursuit, by way of the Virginia Central — an-
other vital supply line — to the gates of the city and beyond.
So much for the task assigned the second of the three Union armies
in Virginia. The third, being larger, had a correspondingly larger
assignment, with graver dangers and quite the highest prize of all
awaiting the prompt fulfillment of its task.
One reason Grant expected Lee to fall back on Richmond in
short order, before Sigel had time to get in position on his flank, was
that he intended to oblige him to do so by launching a back-door attack
on the capital, from across the James, at the same time Meade was
effecting a crossing of the Rapidan, sixty-odd miles to the north. The
commander of this third force would be Major General Benjamin F.
Butler, who had won a reputation for deftness, along with the nickname
"Spoons," in the course of his highly profitable occupation of New
Orleans, all of last year and most of the year before. Much as Sigel had
been commissioned to attract German-born patriots to the colors,
Butler had been made a general to prove to Democrats — at whose
Charleston convention in i860 he had voted fifty-seven consecutive
times to nominate Jefferson Davis for President of the United States —
that the war was not exclusively a Republican affair; Grant did not
select, he inherited him, political abilities and all. For the work at hand,
the former Bay State senator would have some 35,000 effectives of all
arms, about half of them to be brought up from Florida and South
Carolina by the commander of the Department of the South, Major
General Quincy A. Gillmore, while the other half would be drawn
from Butler's own Department of Virginia and North Carolina. He was
to have naval support in moving up the James from his initial base at
Fortress Monroe, as well as for the landing at City Point. That would
put him within easy reach of Petersburg, the southside railroad center
only twenty miles from his true objective, Richmond, which he was
then to seize by means of a sudden lunge across the river. Or if Lee had
managed a quick fall-back in such strength as to prevent a crossing at
that point, Butler, having severed the city's rail connections with the
granaries to the south, would combine with Meade and Sigel, upstream
or down, for the resultant siege of the capital and its eventual surrender.
If all went as intended in the three-way squeeze he had designed
to achieve Lee's encompassment, Grant himself would be there to re-
ceive the gray commander's sword at the surrender ceremony. For by
now he had decided not only that he would return to the East for the
[ zo ] THE CIVIL WAR3T1864
duration of the war, so as to be able to interpose between the Washing-
ton politicians and the strategy they might attempt to subvert, but also
that the most effective position from which to do this would be in close
proximity to the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac. There were,
indeed — in addition to the most obvious one, that being in the field
would remove him from the constricting atmosphere of the District
of Columbia and the disconcerting stares of over-curious civilians, in
and out of government — several reasons for the decision: not the
least of which was that Meade, in command of much the largest of the
three armies in Virginia and charged with much the heaviest burden in
the fighting, was outranked not only by Butler and Sigel, whose armies
were assigned less arduous tasks, but also by Burnside, whose corps
would move in his support and had to be more or less subject to his
orders if he was to avoid delays that might prove disastrous. Although
the problem could be ignored in the easier-going West — there Thomas,
for instance, outranked Sherman, and Mcpherson was junior to several
other maj or generals in all three armies — Easterners were notoriously
touchy about such matters, and if a command crisis arose from the
striking of personality sparks on the question of rank, Grant wanted
to be there to settle it in person, as only he could do. If this resulted
in some discomfort for Meade, whose style might be cramped and whose
glory would no doubt be dimmed by the presence of a superior con-
stantly peering over his shoulder and nudging his elbow, this was re-
grettable, but not nearly as much so, certainly, as various other un-
fortunate things that might happen without Grant there.
Besides, there was still another reason, perhaps of more importance
than all the rest combined. For all its bleeding and dying these past
three years, on a scale no other single army could approach, the paper-
collar Army of the Potomac had precious few real victories to its
credit. It had, in fact, in its confrontations with the adversary now
awaiting its advance into the thickets on the south bank of the river it
was about to cross, a well-founded and long-nurtured tradition of
defeat. The correction for this, Grant believed, was the development of
self-confidence, which seemed to him an outgrowth of aggressiveness,
an eagerness to come to grips with the enemy and a habit of thinking
of wounds it would inflict rather than of wounds it was likely to suffer.
So far, this outlook had been characteristic not of eastern but of western
armies; Grant hoped to effect, in person, a transference of this spirit
which he had done so much to create in the past. Twenty months ago,
it was true, John Pope had come east "to infuse a little western energy"
into the flaccid ranks of the accident-prone divisions that came under
his command in the short-lived Army of Virginia. Unfortunately, he
had only contrived to lengthen by one (or two or three, if Cedar
Mountain and Chantilly were included) the list of spectacular defeats;
Another Grand Design [ 21 ]
his troops had wound up cowering in the Washington defenses — what
was left of them after the thrashing Lee had administered, flank and
rear. But Grant, despite this lamentable example, had much the same
victory formula in mind. The difference was that he backed it up, as
Pope had been unable to do, with an over-all plan, on a national scale,
that embodied the spirit of the offensive.
Sherman, for one, believed he would succeed, although the
severely compressed and beleaguered Confederacy still amounted, as
Grant said, to "an empire in extent." He expected victory, not only
because of the plan they had developed in part between them in the
Cincinnati hotel room, but also because he believed that the struggle had
entered a new phase, one that for the first time favored the forces of
the Union, which at last had come of age, in a military sense, while those
of the South were sliding past their prime. Or so at any rate it seemed
to Sherman. "It was not until after both Gettysburg and Vicksburg
that the war professionally began," he later declared. "Then our men
had learned in the dearest school on earth the simple lesson of war . . .
and it was then that we as professional soldiers could rightly be held
to a just responsibility." Heartened by the prospect, he expressed his
confidence to Grant before they parted: he to return to Nashville, the
headquarters of his new command, and his friend and superior to
Washington for a time, riding eastward past crowds that turned out to
cheer him at every station along the way.
Nor was there any slackening of the adulation at the end of the
line. "General Grant is all the rage," Sherman heard from his senator
brother John the following week. "He is subjected to the disgusting
but dangerous process of being lionized. He is followed by crowds, and
is cheered everywhere." The senator was worried about the effect all
this might have on the man at whom it was directed. "While he must
despise the fickle fools who run after him, he, like most others, may be
spoiled by this excess of flattery. He may be so elated as to forget the
uncertain tenure upon which he holds and stakes his really well-earned
laurels." Sherman, though he was pleased to note that his brother
added: "He is plain and modest, and so far bears himself well," was
quick to jump to his friend's defense, wherein he coupled praise with
an admonition. "Grant is as good a leader as we can find," he replied.
"He has honesty, simplicity of character, singleness of purpose, and no
hope or claim to usurp civil power. His character, more than his genius,
will reconcile armies and attach the people. Let him alone. Don't dis-
gust him by flattery or importunity. Let him alone."
Let him alone, either then or later, was the one thing almost no
one in Washington seemed willing to do; except Lincoln, who assured
Grant that he intended to do just that, at least in a military sense. "The
[22] THE CIVIL WAR3T1864
particulars of your plan I neither know nor seek to know," he was to
tell him presently, on the eve of commitment, and even at their first
interview, before the general left for Tennessee, he had told him (ac-
cording to Grant's recollection of the exchange, years later) "that
he had never professed to be a military man or to know how campaigns
should be conducted . . . but that procrastination on the part of com-
manders and the pressure from the people at the North and Congress,
which was always with him, forced him to issue his series of 'Military
Orders' — one, two, three, etc. He did not know but they were all
wrong, and did know that some of them were. All he wanted or had
ever wanted was someone who would take the responsibility and act,
and call on him for all the assistance needed."
Welcome though this was to hear, Grant was no doubt aware
that the President had said similar things to previous commanders (John
C. Fremont, for example, whom he told: "I have given you carte
blanche. You must use your own judgment, and do the best you can."
Or McClellan, who quoted his assurances after Antietam: "General,
you have saved the country. You must remain in command and carry
us through to the end. I pledge myself to stand between you and harm")
only to jerk the rug from under their feet a short time later, when their
backs were turned; Lincoln had never been one to keep a promise any
longer than he believed the good of the country was involved. However,
in this case he supplemented his private with public remarks to the
same effect. "Grant is the first general I have had," he was reported to
be saying. "I am glad to find a man who can go ahead without me."
To a friend who doubted that Grant should be given so free a rein, he
replied: "Do you hire a man to do your work and then do it yourself?"
To another, who remarked that he was looking well these days, he re-
sponded with an analogy. "Oh, yes, I feel better," he laughed, "for now
I'm like the man who was blown up on a steamboat and said, on coming
down, 'It makes no difference to me; I'm only a passenger.' "
Partly Lincoln's ebullience was the result of having learned, if not
the particulars, then at any rate certain features of Grant's plan. Of its
details, an intimate said later that they "were communicated only to
Grant's most important or most trusted subordinates" — Meade, Butler,
and Sigel, of course, along with Sherman and Banks. "To no others,
except to members of his personal staff, did Grant impart a knowledge
of his plans; and, even among these, there were some with whom he was
reticent." The President and the Secretary of War were both excluded,
though he was willing to discuss with them the principle to be applied in
bringing "the greatest number of troops practicable" to bear against
the forces in rebellion; for example, that the units charged with the
occupation of captured territory and the prevention of rebel incursions
into the North "could perform this service just as well by advancing as
Another Gra?id Design [ 23 ]
by remaining still, and by advancing they would compel the enemy to
keep detachments to hold them back, or else lay his own territory open
to invasion." Lincoln saw the point at once, having urged it often in
the past, although with small success. "Those not skinning can hold a
leg," he said. Grant, as the son of a tanner, knew that this had reference
to hog-killing time in the West, where all hands were given a share in
the work even though there were not enough skinning-knives to go
round. He liked the expression so well, in fact, that he passed it along to
Sherman the following week in a letter explaining Sigel's share in the
Virginia campaign: "If Sigel can't skin himself he can hold a leg while
someone else skins."
By that time he was in the field, where he enjoyed greater privacy
in working on his plan for the distribution of knives to be used in flay-
ing the South alive. Having returned to Washington on March 23, he
established headquarters three days later at Culpeper, six miles beyond
Brandy Station on the Orange & Alexandria Railroad, about midway be-
tween the Rappahannock and the Rapidan. This was the week of the
vernal equinox; tomorrow was Easter Sunday. Yet a fifteen-inch snow
had fallen that Tuesday and the land was still locked in the grip of
winter, as if to mock the hope expressed to Sherman that the armies
could launch their separate but concentric attacks by April 25. To the
west, in plain view, the Blue Ridge Mountains bore on their peaks and
slopes deep drifts of snow, which Grant had been told by old-timers
hereabouts would have to have melted away before he could be sure that
bad weather had gone for good and the roads would support his mov-
ing trains and guns. Down here on the flat at least its whiteness served
to hide the scars inflicted by commanders North and South, who, as one
observer remarked, "had led their armies up and down these fields and
made the landscape desolate." Roundabout Culpeper, he added, "not
a house nor a fence, not a tree was to be seen for miles, where once all
had been cultivated farmland or richly wooded country. Here and
there, a stack of chimneys or a broken cistern marked the site of a
former homestead, but every other landmark had been destroyed. The
very hills were stripped of their forest panoply, and a man could hardly
recognize the haunts familiar to him in his childhood."
Although at present much of this was mercifully blanketed from
sight, the worst of the scars no snow could hide, for they existed in
men's minds and signified afflictions of the spirit, afflictions Grant
would have to overcome before he could instill into the Army of the
Potomac the self-confidence and aggressiveness which he considered
prerequisite to the successful prosecution of its offensive against an
adversary famed throughout the world as the embodiment of the
qualities said to be lacking on the near side of the river that ran between
the armies. Discouraging to his hopes for the inculcation of the spirit
[ 24 ] THE CIVIL WAR35" 1864
of the offensive, the very landmarks scattered about this fought-over
section of Virginia served as doleful reminders of what such plans had
come to in the past. Westward beyond the snow-clad Blue Ridge lay
the Shenandoah Valley, where Banks and Fremont had been sorely
drubbed and utterly confused, and northeastward, leading down this
way, ran the course of the Buckland Races, in which the cavalry had
been chased and taunted. Cedar Mountain loomed dead ahead; there
Sigel, thrown forward by bristly Pope, had come a cropper, as Pope
himself had done only three weeks later, emulating the woeful example
of Irvin McDowell on the plains of Manassas, where the rebels feasted
on his stores, forty miles back up the railroad. Downriver about half
that distance, Burnside had suffered the throbbing pain and numbing
indignity of the Fredericksburg blood-bath and the Mud March; while
close at hand, just over the Rapidan, brooded the Wilderness, where
Hooker had come to grief in a May riot of smoke-choked greenery and
Meade had nearly done the same, inching forward through the ice-
cramped woods a scant four months ago, except that he pulled back
in time to avoid destruction. All these were painful memories to the
veterans who had survived them and passed them on to recruits as a
tradition of defeat — a tradition which Grant was seeking now, if not
to erase (for it could never be erased; it was too much a part of history,
kept alive in the pride of the butternut scarecrows over the river) then
at any rate to overcome by locking it firmly in the past and replacing it
with one of victory.
In working thus at his plans for bringing that tradition into
existence, here and elsewhere, he was assisted greatly by a command
arrangement allowed for in the War Department order appointing him
general-in-chief in place of Halleck, who was relieved "at his own re-
quest" and made chief of staff, an office created to provide a channel
of communication between Grant and his nineteen department heads,
particularly in administrative matters. The work would be heavy for
Old Brains, the glory slight; Hooker, who had feuded with him through-
out his eastern tenure, sneered that his situation was like that of a man
who married with the understanding that he would not sleep with his
wife. But Halleck thereby freed Grant from the need for attending to
a great many routine distractions. Instead of being snowed under by
paperwork, the lieutenant general could give his full attention to
strategic planning, and this he did. From time to time he would return
to Washington for an overnight stay — primarily, it would seem, to visit
Mrs Grant, who had joined him in Cincinnati for the ride back east —
but mainly he kept to his desk in the field, poring over maps and blueing
the air of his Culpeper headquarters with cigar smoke, much as he had
done a year ago in the former ladies' cabin of the Magnolia, where he
planned the campaign that took Vicksburg.
Another Grand Design [ 25 ]
X 2 X
Of all these several component segments, each designed to contribute to
Grant's over-all pattern for victory on a national scale, the first to go
awry was the preliminary one — preliminary, that is, in the sense that
it would have to be wound up before the more valid thrust at Mobile
could begin — involving Banks and Steele in the far-off Transmississippi,
hundreds of miles from the two vital centers around which would swirl
the fighting that would determine the outcome of the war. It was the
first because it had already begun to falter before Grant was in a
position to exercise control. Moreover, once he was in such a position,
as general-in-chief, his attempts along that line only served to increase
the frustration which both subordinates, proceeding as it were against
their hearts, had been feeling all along. Not that it mattered all that
much, whatever he did or did not do, for the seeds of defeat had been
planted in the conception. By then the only cure would have been to
abandon the crop entirely; which would not do, since Lincoln himself,
with a fretful sidelong glance at France's latter-day Napoleon, had had
a hand in the sowing.
Promptly after the midsummer fall of Port Hudson opened the
Mississippi to Union trade throughout its length, Halleck had taken
the conquest of Texas as his prime concern in the western theater. It
seemed to him the logical next step. Besides, he had always liked to keep
things tidy in his rear, and every success achieved under his direction
had been followed by a pause for just that purpose. After Donelson,
after Corinth, after Vicksburg, he had dismembered the victorious blue
force, dispersing its parts on various lateral or rearward assignments, with
much attendant loss of momentum. Consequently, although it was here
that the North had scored all but a handful of its triumphs in the field,
the war in the West had consisted largely of starts and stops, with the
result that a considerable portion of the Federal effort had been ex-
pended in overcoming prime inertia at the start of each campaign. And
so it was to be in the present case, if Old Brains had his way. With the
President's unquestioning approval — which, as usual, tended to make
him rather imperious in manner and altogether intolerant of objections —
Halleck had been urging the conquest of Texas on Banks, who had been
opposed in the main to such a venture, so far at least as it involved his
own participation. A former Massachusetts governor and Speaker of
the national House of Representatives, he was, like most political
appointees, concerned with building a military reputation on which
to base his postwar bid for further political advancement. He had in
fact his eye on the White House, and he preferred a more spectacular
assignment, one nearer the center of the stage and attended with less
[26] THE CIVIL WAR^ 1864
risk, or in any case no more risk than seemed commensurate with the
prize, which in his opinion this did not; Texas was undeniably vast, but
it was also comparatively empty. He favored Mobile as a fitting objec-
tive by these standards, and had been saying so ever since the surrender
of Port Hudson first gave him the feel of laurels on his brow. Halleck
had stuck to Texas, however, and Halleck as general-in-chief had had
his way.
Texas it was, although there still was considerable disagreement
as to the best approach to the goal, aside from a general conviction that
it could not be due west across the Sabine and the barrens, where, as one
of Banks's staff remarked, there was "no water in the summer and fall,
and plenty of water but no road in the winter and spring." Halleck
favored an ascent of Red River, to Shreveport and beyond, which
would allow for gunboat support and rapid transportation of supplies;
but this had some of the same disadvantages as the direct crosscountry
route, the Red being low on water all through fall and winter. While
waiting for the spring rise, without which the river was unnavigable
above Alexandria, barely one third of the distance up to Shreveport,
Banks tried his hand at a third approach, the mounting of amphibious
assaults against various points along the Lone Star coast. The first of
these, at Sabine Pass in September, was bloodily repulsed; the navy lost
two gunboats and their crews before admitting it could put no troops
ashore at that point. So Banks revised his plan by reversing it, end for
end. He managed an unsuspected landing near the mouth of the Rio
Grande, occupied Brownsville unopposed, and began to work his way
back east by way of Aransas Pass and Matagorda Bay. There he stopped.
So far he had encountered no resistance, but just ahead lay Galveston,
with Sabine Pass beyond, both of them scenes of past defeats which he
would not risk repeating. All he had got for his pains was a couple of
dusty border towns and several bedraggled miles of beach, amounting
to little more in fact than a few pinpricks along one leathery flank of
the Texas elephant. By now it was nearly spring, however, and time for
him to get back onto what Halleck, in rather testy dispatches, had kept
assuring him was the true path of conquest: up the Red, which soon was
due for the annual rise that would convert it into an artery of invasion.
By now, too, as a result of closer inspection of the prize, Banks
had somewhat revised his opinion as to the worth of the proposed
campaign. Mobile was still what he ached for, but Mobile would have
to wait. Meantime, a successful ascent of the Red, as a means of achiev-
ing the subjugation of East Texas, would not only add a feather to his
military cap; it would also, by affording him and his army valuable
training in the conduct of combined operations, serve as excellent prep-
aration for better and more difficult things to come. Besides, study dis-
closed immediate advantages he had overlooked before. In addition to
providing a bulwark against the machinations of the French in Mexico,
Another Grand Design [ 27 ]
the occupation of Shreveport would yield political as well as strategic
fruits. First there was Lincoln's so-called Ten Percent plan, whereby
a state would be permitted to return to the national fold as soon as ten
percent of its voters affirmed their loyalty to the Union and its laws.
With Shreveport firmly in Federal hands, Confederate threats would no
longer deter the citizens of West Louisiana and South Arkansas from
taking the oath required; Louisiana and Arkansas, grateful to the
Administration which had granted them readmission, would cast their
votes in the November election, thereby winning for the general who
had made such action possible the gratitude of the man who, four years
later, would exert a powerful influence in the choice of his successor.
There, indeed, was a prize worth grasping. Moreover, the aforemen-
tioned strategic fruits of such a campaign had been greatly enlarged in
the course of the fall and winter, occasioned by Steele's advance on
Little Rock in September, which extended the Federal occupation down
to the Arkansas River, bisecting the state along a line from Fort Smith
to Napoleon, and posed a threat to Confederate installations farther
south. Ordnance works at Camden and Arkadelphia had been shifted
to Tyler and Marshall, Texas, where they now were back in production,
as were others newly established at Houston and San Antonio. Cut off
from the industrial East by the fall of Vicksburg, still-insurgent Trans-
mississippians had striven in earnest to develop their own resources.
Factories at Tyler, Houston, and Austin, together with one at Washing-
ton, Arkansas, were delivering 10,000 pairs of shoes a month to rebel
quartermasters, and inmates of the Texas penitentiary at Huntsville
were turning out more than a million yards of cotton and woolen cloth
every month, to be made into gray or butternut uniforms for distribu-
tion to die-hard fighters in all three states of the region. Shreveport itself
had become an industrial complex quite beyond anyone's dream a year
ago, with foundries, shops, and laboratories for the production of guns
and ammunition, without which not even the doughtiest grayback
would constitute the semblance of a threat. If Banks could lay hands on
Shreveport, then move on into the Lone Star vastness just beyond, the
harvest would be heavy, both in materiel and glory. By late January,
having considered all this, and more, he was so far in agreement with
Halleck that he wired him: "The occupation of Shreveport will be to
the country west of the Mississippi what that of Chattanooga is to the
east. And as soon as this can be accomplished," he added, his enthusiasm
waxing as he wrote, "the country west of Shreveport will be in condi-
tion for a movement into Texas."
Another persuasive factor there was, which in time would be
reckoned the most influential of them all, though less perhaps on Banks
himself than on various others, in and out of the army and navy, about
to be involved in the campaign. This was cotton. Banks was intrigued
by the notion that the proposed invasion not only could be carried out
[28] THE CIVIL WAR3T 1864
on a self-supporting basis, financially speaking, but could result in
profits that would cover other, less lucrative efforts, such as the ones
about to be launched through the ravaged counties of northern Virginia
and across the red-clay hills and gullies of North Georgia. What was
more, he backed his calculations with experience. On his march up
Bayou Teche to Alexandria, in April of the year before, he had seized
an estimated $5,000,000 in contraband goods, including lumber, sugar
and salt, cattle and livestock, and cotton to the amount of 5000 bales.
This last represented nearly half the value of the spoils — and would
represent even more today, with the price in Boston soaring rapidly
toward two dollars a pound in greenbacks. Yet those 5000 bales collected
along the Teche were scarcely more than a dab compared to the number
awaiting seizure in plantation sheds along the Red and in the Texas
hinterland; Banks predicted that the campaign would produce between
200,000 and 300,000 bales. Even the lower of these two figures, at a
conservative estimate of $500 a bale, would bulge the Treasury with
no less than a hundred million dollars, which by itself would be enough
to run the whole war for two months. Nor was that all. In addition to
this direct financial gain, he would also put back into operation the
spindles lying idle in the mills of his native state, where he had got his
start as a bobbin boy and where the voters would someday turn out in
hordes to express their thanks for all he had done for them and the
nation in their time of trial. It was no wonder his enthusiasm rose with
every closer look at the political, strategic, and financial possibilities
of a campaign he formerly had thought not worth his time.
Perhaps the most persuasive factor of all, so far at least as Banks
was concerned, was that he secured Halleck's approval of a plan, worked
out between them, that assured the cooperation not only of Steele, who
would move south from Little Rock to the vicinity of Shreveport with
15,000 troops, but also of Sherman, who was to send 10,000 of his
veterans to Alexandria for a combination with the 20,000 Banks himself
would bring to that point by repeating last year's profitable march up
the Teche. Including a marine brigade and the crews of twenty-odd
warships under Rear Admiral David D. Porter, which were to serve
as escort for the transports bringing Sherman's men from Vicksburg
and thenceforth as an integral part of the command in its ascent of the
Red, this would give Banks a total strength of just under 50,000; which
he believed was sufficient, in itself, to guarantee success in the campaign.
His opponent, General Edmund Kirby Smith, commanding that vast,
five-state Transmississippi region already beginning to be known as
"Kirby-Smithdom," had not much more than half that many soldiers
in all of Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, and the Indian Territory combined.
Such opposition as Smith might be able to offer the veteran 45,000-man
blue army and its hard-hitting 210-gun fleet, Banks was not unjustified
Another Grand Design [ 29 ]
in believing, would only serve to swell the glory involved in the inevita-
ble outcome.
Sherman himself was inclined to agree with this assessment,
though he was aware (as Banks perhaps was not, having had little time
for theoretic study) of Napoleon's dictum that the most difficult of all
maneuvers was the combination of widely divided columns, regardless
of their over-all numerical superiority, on a field of battle already
occupied by an enemy who thus would be free, throughout the interim
preceding their convergence, to strike at one or another of the approach-
ing columns. His only regret, the red-haired general said when he came
down to New Orleans in early A4arch to confer with Banks about his
share in the campaign, was that Grant had forbidden him to go along.
He stayed two days, working out the arrangements for his troops to be
at Alexandria in time for a meeting with Banks's column on the 17th —
the same day, as it turned out, that he would meet with Grant in Nash-
ville, though he did not know that yet — then steamed back upriver to
Vicksburg, declining his host's invitation to stay over for the inaugura-
tion on March 5 of the recently elected Union-loyal governor of
Louisiana, one Michael Hahn, a Bavaria-born lawyer and sugar planter
who had opposed secession from the start. Despite the delay it would
entail, Banks apparently felt obliged to remain for the ceremony —
which was quite elaborate, one item on the program being a rendition
of the "Anvil Chorus" in Lafayette Square by no less than a thousand
singers, accompanied by all the bands of the army, while church bells
pealed and cannon were fired in unison by electrical devices — then at
last, after managing to get through another two weeks of attending to
additional political and administrative matters, got aboard a steamboat
for a fast ride up the Mississippi and the Red for the meeting at
Alexandria with Sherman's men and his own, whose ascent of the
Teche had been delayed by heavy going on roads made nearly bottom-
less by rain. Before leaving he had written to Halleck of the public
reaction to the inaugural celebration, thousand-tongued chorus, elec-
trically fired cannon, and all. "It is impossible to describe it with truth,"
he wrote. In the future, much the same thing would be said of the
campaign he was about to give the benefit of his personal supervision.
It was March 24 by the time he reached Alexandria, one week late.
Even so, he got there ahead of the men in his five divisions, who did
not complete their slog up the Teche until next day. Plastered with mud
and eight days behind schedule, they did not let the hard and tardy
march depress their spirits, which were high. "The soldier is a queer
fellow," a reporter who accompanied them wrote; "he is not at all like
other white men. Tired, dusty, cold or hungry — no matter, he is
always jolly. I find him, under the most adverse circumstances, shout-
ing, singing, skylarking. There is no care or tire in him." Banks, for all
[30] THE CIVIL WAR3sr 1864
the dignity he was careful to preserve, shared this skylark attitude when
he arrived, and with good cause. The time spent waiting for him to
show had been put to splendid use by Sherman's veterans, who had
arrived on time, with one considerable victory already to their credit
and another scored before the Massachusetts general joined them.
Three divisions under Brigadier General A. J. Smith, a Pennsyl-
vania-born West Pointer, they had left Vicksburg on March 10 and
gone ashore two days later at Simsport, just up the Atchafalaya from its
confluence with the Red. While Porter's twenty-two heavily gunned
warships — thirteen of them ironclads, accompanied by some forty
transports and quartermaster boats — returned to the Red for a frontal
attack on Fort De Russy, a once-abandoned but now reoccupied Con-
federate strongpoint about halfway up to Alexandria, the infantry
crossed a lush, bayou-mazed prairie called Avoyelles to come upon
the fortification from the rear. Such few rebels as they saw en route
were quick to scamper out of reach, having no apparent stomach for a
fight. By late afternoon of March 14 the bluecoats were in position for
a mass assault, not only hearing the roar of Porter's guns, which showed
that he too was in place on schedule, but also receiving a few of his
heavy shells that overshot the fort. Just before sundown, at a cost of
only 38 killed and wounded, they stormed and took it, along with its
ten guns and its garrison of 300 bitter, shell-dazed men, who, according
to a newsman with the attackers, "screamed in demoniac tones, even
after our banners flaunted from their bastions and ramparts." This done,
the victors got back aboard their transports for the thirty-mile ride to
Alexandria: all, that is, but the men of one division, who stayed behind
to raze the fort by tearing out and burning its wooden beams and level-
ing the earthworks, after which they gave it the finishing touch by
blowing up the powder magazine.
They had received excellent schooling in such work under
Sherman, especially on the recent expedition to Meridian, where, in
Sherman's words, they had cut "a swath of desolation fifty miles broad
across the State of Mississippi which the present generation will not
forget." In such work they used sledges and crowbars more than rifles,
and though it involved much vigorous exercise, it was not only a fine
way of relaxing from the rigors of the Vicksburg siege, it was also a
good deal safer, since their efforts were mainly directed against civilians.
Moreover, this particular division had a commander, Brigadier General
T. Kilby Smith, whose views along these lines coincided more or less
with their own. "The inhabitants hereabouts are pretty tolerably
frightened," the thirty-three-year-old former lawyer was presently to
write home to his mother in Ohio. "Our western troops are tired of
shilly shally, and this year they will deal their blows very heavily. Past
kindnesses and forbearance has not been appreciated or understood;
frequently ridiculed. The people now will be terribly scourged." Pre-
Another Grand Design [ 31 ]
sumably such words had been passed down as well as out, for private
residences had begun to burn in Simsport almost as soon as the transports
ran out their gangplanks for the troops to go ashore, and their progress
across the lovely Avoyelles Prairie was marked by the ruins of burnt-
out houses, some with nothing to show they had been there except an
unsupported chimney; "Sherman Monuments," these were called. Arcadi-
ans of the region, a gentle people with a heritage of freedom, many of
whom had been pro-Union up to now, were indeed "terribly scourged."
The pattern was set for the campaign, so far at least as the western
troops — "Sherman's gorillas," they dubbed themselves — were con-
cerned. Next would come the turn of the inhabitants of the piny uplands
beyond Alexandria, although a correspondent of the St Louis Republi-
can was already predicting that unless such practices were discouraged
there was a danger of "our whole noble army degenerating into a band
of cutthroats and robbers."
By way of proving their skill as fighters as well as burners, six
regiments of gorilla-guerillas, accompanied by a brigade of Banks's
cavalry that rode in ahead of his infantry, pressed on above Alexandria
to Henderson's Hill, twenty miles up Bayou Rapides, on a forced re-
connaissance which reached a climax on the night of March 21 with a
surprise attack, through rain and hail and darkness, that captured a
whole regiment of rebel cavalry, some 250 men and mounts, together
with all four guns of a battery also caught off guard by the assault.
Returning to base three days later, they paraded their captives before
Banks, who had just arrived and was delighted to find that they had
not wasted the time spent waiting for him and the rest of the five
divisions they were supposed to reinforce. When these wound up their
march next day, March 25, he had concentrated under his immediate
command by far the most impressive display of military strength ever
seen in the Transmississippi, on land or water. With ninety pieces of
field artillery and considerably better than twice that number of
heavier guns afloat, he had 30,000 effectives on hand, practically all of
them seasoned campaigners, and was about to move up the Red for a
conjunction near Shreveport with half that many more under Steele,
who he now learned had left Little Rock two days ago, marching
south-southwest toward the same objective. The outlook was auspicious,
especially in light of the fact that his troops had already proved their
superiority, first at Fort De Russy and again at Henderson's Hill, over
such forces of the enemy as they had managed to trick or cower into
remaining within their reach. But then next day, as he was about to
order a resumption of the march, a high-ranking courier arrived with
Grant's eleven-day-old letter of instructions from Nashville, written
while waiting for Sherman to join him there.
This could not but give Banks pause, stipulating as it did that if
he did not feel certain of taking Shreveport by the end of April he was
[32] THE CIVIL WAR35"1864
to return A. J. Smith's command to Sherman by the middle of that month
"for movements east of the Mississippi." Discouraging as this was in
part — for it not only fixed him with a tighter schedule than he had felt
obliged to follow when he set out, it also threatened him with the im-
minent loss of the three best divisions in his army — Banks took heart
at something else the letter said. If the expedition was successful, he was
to leave the holding of Shreveport and the line of the Red to Steele,
while he himself returned to New Orleans for an advance on Mobile as
part of the new general-in-chief's design for a spring offensive in the
central theater. This was the assignment he had coveted all along, and
though he was aware of the danger of being over-hasty in military
matters, this went far toward reconciling him to the step-up in the
tempo of his march. With Mobile to follow, more or less as a reward
for past successes, he wanted this Red River business over and done
with as soon as possible. Accordingly, he put his cavalry in motion
that same day and followed it two days later with his infantry, while
A. J. Smith's men got back aboard their transports to accompany the
fleet. The immediate objective was Grand Ecore, sixty miles upstream
or roughly half the total distance. His plan was to move rapidly to
that point and to Natchitoches, four miles south of Grand Ecore and the
river, after which would come the leap at Shreveport that would wind
up the campaign.
Banks himself did not leave Alexandria until after April 1, having
remained behind to supervise an election on that date, by such voters
as had taken the loyalty oath, of delegates to a state convention whose
task it would be to draw up a new constitution tying Louisiana more
firmly to the Union. Meanwhile the troops had been making excellent
progress, encountering nothing more than scattered resistance that was
easily brushed aside. By the time of the April Fool election, both
Natchitoches and Grand Ecore had been occupied by leading elements
of the respective columns, one advancing by land, the other by water.
This meant that the campaign was back on schedule, despite the delay
at the start. So far all was well, except perhaps that the lack of opposition
had resulted in a dwindling of public concern outside the immediate
area of operations. "It is a remarkable fact," the New Orleans corres-
pondent of the New York Tribune declared on April 2, "that this Red
River expedition is not followed by that anxious interest and solicitude
which has heretofore attended similar army movements. The success
of our troops is looked upon as a matter of course, and the cotton
speculators are the only people I can find who are nicely weighing
probabilities and chances in connection with the expedition."
If anxious interest and solicitude were what he was seeking, he
could have found them not only in the New Orleans cotton exchange
but also up Red River, aboard the flagship of the fleet. Porter had al-
Another Grand Design [ 33 ]
ready lost one of his prized vessels, the veteran Conestoga, sunk March 8
in a collision on the Aiississippi while returning from Vicksburg with a
heavy load of ammunition that took her to the bottom in four minutes.
She was the eighth major warship the admiral had lost in the past
sixteen months, and two of these had been captured and turned against
him, at least for a time. What was worse, it had begun to seem to him
that if he continued to go along with Banks he would be in danger of
losing a great many more, not so much through enemy action — he
had never been one to flinch from combat — as through an act of nature;
or, rather, a non-act. The annual rise of the Red, which usually began
around New Year's, had not thus far materialized. Perhaps it was merely
late this year; but twice before, in 1846 and 1855, it had not occurred
at all. That was a nine-year interval, and now that another nine years
had elapsed, there were indications that if Porter got his boats above
the mile-long falls and rapids at Alexandria, he might not be able to get
them down again. If the river, instead of rising, took a drop, he would
be left with the agonizing choice of blowing them up or having them
fall into rebel hands, which would mean nothing less than the undoing
of all the navy had accomplished in these past two years of war on the
western waters. That was unthinkable, but he had boasted so often
that he could take his fleet "wherever the sand was damp," the admiral
now found it impossible to renege on his promise to stay with the army
to the end of its upstream trek. After three days of tugging and bump-
ing — during which time the river, to his alarm, began to dwindle, then
rose slightly — he got his largest ironclad, Eastport, over the falls; after
which he followed with a dozen lighter-draft gunboats and twenty
transports laden with troops. "The water is quite a muddy red and looks
anything but inviting," a sailor wrote in his diary as the column began its
winding crawl to Grand Ecore. "The transports from the head belch
out three bellowing whistles which is caught up by the next, and some-
times two or three vie in a euphonious concert much resembling the
bellowing of cattle at the smell of blood."
So far, except for the considerable slaughter of pigs and chickens
encountered on the march, the smell of blood had been little more than
a figurative expression. A4oreover, if Banks could judge by indications,
the Confederates were either content to have it remain so, or else they
were incapable of having it otherwise, knowing only too well that most
of the blood that would be spilled would be their own. In any case, the
one thing they had not done was fight, and as he boarded his head-
quarters boat at Alexandria for an upstream ride on the evening of
April 2 — a nattily dressed man in his vigorous prime, two years short
of fifty, wearing highly polished boots and chinking spurs, a light-blue
overcoat, buckskin gauntlets elbow-high, a bell-crowned hat, and a
neatly groomed mustache and brief imperial — he got off a dispatch to
[34] THE CIVIL WAR3T1864
Halleck expressing his confidence in "an immediate and successful issue"
of the campaign, the end of which he believed was in plain view.
"Our troops now occupy Natchitoches," he informed Old Brains,
"and we hope to be in Shreveport by the 10th of April. I do not fear
concentration of the enemy at that point. My fear is that they may not
be willing to meet us."
In the course of the past three years Lincoln had read other such
dispatches, and all too often they had turned out to be prologues to
disaster. Reading this one, when in time it reached Washington, he
frowned and shook his head in disapproval.
"I am sorry to see this tone of confidence," he said. "The next
news we shall hear from there will be of a defeat."
A defeat was what the Confederates had very much in mind for
the invaders: especially Major General Richard Taylor, Kirby Smith's
West Louisiana commander, who had crossed swords with Banks before,
first in the Shenandoah Valley, two years ago, and then along the Teche
the previous year. Tactically, the second of these confrontations had
not been as brilliant as the first, in which Taylor, serving as one of
Stonewall Jackson's ablest lieutenants, had helped to strip the former
Bay State politician of so many well-stocked wagons that he had been
nicknamed "Commissary" Banks; but the aptness of this nom-de-guerre
had been redemonstrated last summer, west of New Orleans, when
Taylor's surprise descent on Banks's forward supply base at Brashear
City, yielding an estimated $2,000,000 in ordnance and other stores,
helped immeasurably to equip the army he had been raising for the
defense of his home state ever since his transfer from Virginia. A son of
Zachary Taylor and brother of Jefferson Davis's first wife, now just
past his thirty-eighth birthday, he was described by one of his soldiers
as "a quiet, unassuming little fellow, but noisy on retreats, with a ten-
dency to cuss mules and wagons which stall on the road."
This tendency had been given a free rein for the past three weeks,
in the course of which he had been obliged to fall back nearly two
hundred miles before an adversary he was convinced he could whip, if
he could only manage to meet him on anything approaching equal
terms. But there was the rub. With fewer than 7000 troops in the path of
better than four times that number backed by the guns of the Union
fleet, he had no choice except to continue his retreat, hard though it
was to suffer without retaliation the vandalism of A. J. Smith's gorillas,
not to mention such professional indignities as Fort De Russy and the
loss of most of his cavalry at Henderson's Hill. His consolation was that
he was falling back toward reinforcements, which Kirby Smith kept
assuring him were on the way from Arkansas and Texas. However — as
might have been expected of a young man who had served his war
Another Grand Design [ 35 ]
apprenticeship under the bloody-minded and highly time-conscious
Stonewall — he chafed at the delay. On the last day of March, with
his troops in motion for a concentration forty miles northwest of
Natchitoches and less than half that distance from the Texas border, he
sent an irate dispatch informing the department commander that his
patience was near the snapping point. "Had I conceived for an instant
that such astonishing delay would ensue before reinforcements reached
me," he told Smith, "I would have fought a battle even against the
heavy odds. It would have been better to lose the state after a defeat
than to surrender it without a fight. The fairest and richest portion of the
Confederacy is now a waste. Louisiana may well know her destiny.
Her children are exiles; her labor system is destroyed. Expecting every
hour to receive the promised reinforcements, I did not feel justified in
hazarding a general engagement with my little army. I shall never
cease to regret my error."
"Hydrocephalus at Shreveport produced atrophy elsewhere," he
afterwards protested, complaining acidly that while his superior "dis-
played much ardor in the establishment of bureaux, and on a scale
proportioned rather to the extent of his territory than to the smallness
of his force," Smith neglected the more vital task of resisting blue aggres-
sion in the field. In thus indulging his fondness for classical allusion,
while at the same time venting his spleen, Yale man Taylor was not al-
together fair to a West-Point-trained commander who by now had
spent a hectic year being responsible for a region the size of western
Europe, much of it trackless and practically none of it self-sustaining,
at any rate in a military sense, at the time he assumed his manifold
duties. Not the least of these was the establishment of those bureaus
of supply and communication scorned by Taylor but made altogether
necessary by the loss, within four months of Smith's arrival, of all prac-
tical connection with the more prosperous half of his country lying east
of the Mississippi. In short, he had been involved in a year-long strategic
and logistic nightmare. If at times he seemed to vacillate in the face of
danger, that was to a large extent because of the scantiness of his re-
sources, both in manpower and equipment, in contrast to those of an
adversary whose own were apparently limitless and who could move
against him, more or less at will, by land and water. Missouri had been
lost before he got there. Then had come the subtraction of the northern
half of Arkansas, suffered while pinprick lodgments were being made
along the lower coast of Texas. Now it turned out that all this had been
by way of preparation for a simultaneous advance by two blue columns
under Steele and Banks, converging respectively from the north and
east upon his headquarters at Shreveport and containing between them
more veteran troops than he had in his entire five-state department, in-
cluding guerillas and recruits. If he was jumpy it was small wonder, no
[36] THE CIVIL WAR»" 1864
matter how resentful Richard Taylor might feel at being obliged to
backtrack, across the width of his beloved home state, before the menace
of a force four times his own.
Warned early of the double-pronged threat to his headquarters
and supply base — the fall of which would mean the loss, not only of
Louisiana and what remained of Arkansas, but also of much that lay
beyond — Smith decided to meet the nearer and larger danger first:
meaning Banks. He would hit him with all the strength he could muster,
then turn and do the same to Steele when he came up. Accordingly, he
alerted his Texas commander, Major General John B. Magruder, to
prepare his entire force, garrisons excluded, for a march to support
Taylor. In Arkansas, Lieutenant General Theophilus Holmes was given
similar instructions, except that he was to retain his cavalry for use
against Steele's column, slowing it down as best he could until such
time as Taylor had disposed of Banks and was free to come in turn to
his assistance. These alerting orders were issued in late February, before
either enemy force had been assembled. In early March, though neither
Federal column had yet set out, Magruder was told to put his men in
motion. They amounted in all to some 2500 horsemen, combined in a
division under Brigadier General Thomas Green, and left Magruder
with only about the same number for the defense of all of Texas: a
situation the Virginian considered not unlike the one he had faced two
years ago, on the York-James peninsula, when he found himself standing
with one brigade in the path of McClellan's huge blue juggernaut.
Meanwhile Holmes, whose deafness was only one of the symptoms of
his superannuation, had been relieved at his own request and succeeded
by Major General Sterling Price, his second in command; Price was
told to put his alerted troops — two small divisions of infantry under
Brigadier General T. J. Churchill, with a combined strength of 4500
effectives — on the march for Shreveport. These were the reinforce-
ments Taylor had been expecting all the time he was fading back across
the width of Louisiana, protesting hotly at their nonarrival.
Green's progress was necessarily slow across the barrens and the
Sabine, but Churchill's was impeded by Smith himself. By now the
Transmississippi chieftain had begun to suspect that he had hoisted him-
self onto the horns of a dilemma: as indeed he had, since he thought he
had. Having attended boldly to the threat posed by Banks, he feared
that he had erred in leaving Price too little strength to hinder Steele, who
might be able to descend on Shreveport before Taylor could dispose
of Banks and come to its defense. Taking council of his fears, which
were enlarged by information that Steele had set out from Little Rock
on March 23, Smith held Churchill for a time at headquarters, so as to
be able to use him in either direction, north or south, depending on
whether the need was greater in Arkansas or Louisiana, then finally, in
response to Taylor's increasingly strident dispatches, ordered Churchill
Another Grand Design [ 37 ]
to move south to Keatchie, a hamlet roughly midway between Shreve-
port and Taylor's latest point of concentration, just southeast of Mans-
field. He had known what to do, but he had been so hesitant to do it
that he had wound up not knowing what to do after all.
Dick Taylor had not helped with his hard-breathing threats to
gamble everything on a single long-odds strike, provoked by despera-
tion and congenital impatience. "When Green joins me, I repeat," he
notified headquarters, "I shall fight a battle for Louisiana, be the forces
of the enemy what they may." Horrified, Smith urged caution. "A
general engagement should not be risked without hopes of success," he
warned, reminding his impetuous lieutenant that rashness "would be
fatal to the whole cause and to the department. Our role must be a
defensive policy." Moreover, such resolution as he had managed so far
to maintain, regarding his plan for meeting the two-pronged Federal
menace, was grievously shaken by Taylor's expressed opinion that
Steele, a "bold, ardent, vigorous" professional, might constitute a graver
danger, despite his reported disparity in numbers, than the amateur
Banks, who was "cold, timid, [and] easily foiled." Smith continued to
waver under the suspicion that he had chosen the wrong man to tackle
first. Finally on April 5, alarmed by news that Steele was making rapid
progress, and in fact had completed nearly half his southward march
by crossing the Little Missouri River the day before, he decided to ride
down to Mansfield for a conference with Taylor. His intention was to
revise his plan by reversing it. He would concentrate everything first
against Steele, rather than in front of Banks, even if this meant standing
a siege at Shreveport or retreating into Texas, where — it now occurred
to him, as a further persuasive argument for postponing the show-
down — a defeat would be more disastrous for the invaders.
Taylor was dismayed by his chief's vacillation. Asked for his
advice three days ago he had been quick to give it. "Action, prompt,
vigorous action, is required," he replied. "While we are deliberating the
enemy is marching. King James lost three kingdoms for a mass. We
may lose three states without a battle." He still felt that way about it,
and he said so, face to face with Smith at Mansfield on the morning of
April 6. Smith heard him out, a mild-mannered Floridian just under forty,
outwardly unperturbed by the short-tempered Taylor, but left that
afternoon to return to his headquarters, still gripped inwardly by inde-
cision. Taylor, though he had been reinforced that day by Green,
whose arrival raised his strength to 9000 effectives, still had been given
no definite instructions. Churchill's 4500 were at Keatchie, twenty miles
away, but when or whether they would be released to him he did not
know. All Smith had said was that he would inform him as soon as he
made up his mind — the one thing he seemed incapable of doing. Taylor
apparently decided, then and there, that if anything was going to be done
in this direction he would have to accomplish it on his own. And that
[38] THE CIVIL WAR»"1864
was what he did, beginning the following day, except that he had con-
siderable help from his opponent, who presented him with a tactical
opportunity he did not feel he could neglect, with or without the
approval of his superior, forty miles away in Shreveport.
Banks came on boldly, still exuding confidence as he prepared at
Natchitoches and Grand Ecore for the final stage of his ascent of the
Red. Alexandria lay sixty miles behind him, Shreveport only sixty miles
ahead. The first half of this 120-mile stretch had been covered in Rvt
days of easy marching, and he planned to cover the second half in less.
Such frets as he had encountered up to now came not from the
rebels, who he was convinced wanted no part of a hand-to-hand en-
counter, but from internal complications. For one thing, smallpox had
broken out in the Marine Brigade, with the result that it was returned
to Vicksburg and Kilby Smith's division took over the pleasant duty
of ''escorting" — that is, riding with — the fleet. The loss of these 3000
marines, who had not been included in his original calculations anyhow,
was largely offset by the arrival of the 1500-man Corps d'Afrique, com-
posed of Negro volunteers who had proved their combat worth to
doubters at Port Hudson the year before.
Another complication was not so easily dismissed, however, for
it had to do with money: meaning cotton. Banks had been getting very
little of this because of Porter, who had been getting a great deal of it
indeed — all, in fact, that came within his 2 1 o-gun reach. Unlike the
army, which seized and turned over rebel cotton to the government
as contraband of war, the navy defined cotton as subject to seizure
more or less as if it was an authentic high-seas prize, the proceeds of
which were to be divided among the officers and crew of the vessel
that confiscated it, the only stipulation being that the bales had to have
been the property of the Confederate government. Very little of it was,
of course, but that did not cramp Porter or his sailors. They simply
stenciled "C.S.A." on each captured bale, then drew a line through the
still-wet letters and stenciled "U.S.N." below. When an army colonel
remarked that the result signified "Cotton Stealing Association of the
United States Navy," the admiral laughed as loud as anyone, if not
louder, in proportion to his lion's share of the proceeds as commander
of the fleet. This would not have been so bad, in itself; Banks, though
punctiliously honest, had grown more or less accustomed to such
practices by others, in the service as in politics. The trouble was that
the upriver planters, hearing of Porter's activities below, began to burn
their cotton rather than have it fall into his hands. By the time the
civilian speculators, who had accompanied the army from New Orleans
and were prepared to pay the going backwoods price for the hoarded
staple, arrived in the wake of the gunboats, bearing trade permits
signed by Chase and even Lincoln, there was nothing left for them
Another Grand Design [ 39 ]
to buy, either cheap or dear, for resale to the hungry mills of New
England. A4oreover, they directed their resentment less at Porter, who
after all was doing nothing they would not have done in his place, than
at Banks, who they believed had lured them up this winding rust-colored
river only to dash their hopes by failing to deliver even a fraction of
what he had encouraged them to expect. By the time they reached
Alexandria it was evident there was nothing to be gained by going
farther; Banks made it official by ordering their return. They had no
choice except to obey, but they were bitter as only men could be who
had been wounded in their wallets. "When General Banks sent them
all back to Alexandria, without their sheaves," a staff officer later
wrote, "they returned to New Orleans furious against him and mouth-
ing calumnies."
It was of course no good thing, militarily or politically, for a
man to have such enemies in his rear, but at least he was rid of a frock-
coated clan who, he complained, had "harassed the soul out of me."
And though they would be quick to fix the blame on him in case of a
mishap, let alone an outright failure, Banks was more confident than
ever that nothing of the kind was going to happen. It was not going
to happen because there would be no tactical occasion for it to happen;
Taylor simply would not risk a probable defeat. After reviewing his
troops at Natchitoches on April 4 — a frequent practice which always
brought him pleasure and tended to enlarge his self-respect — the
former Bay State governor said as much in a letter to his wife. "The
enemy retreats before us," he informed her, "and will not fight a battle
this side of Shreveport if then."
When two days later — April 6: the second anniversary of
Shiloh — he set out on the final leg of his advance, his route and order
of march demonstrated, even more forcefully than his letters to Halleck
and Mrs Banks had done, the extent of his conviction that the rebels
would not dare to stand and fight before he reached his goal. At Grand
Ecore the land and water columns diverged for the first time in the
campaign, the former taking an inland road that curved west, then
northwest, through the villages of Pleasant Hill and Mansfield, and
finally northeast, back toward the Red, for a meeting with the fleet
abreast of Springfield Landing, roughly two thirds of the way to
Shreveport, which they then would capture by a joint attack. Banks
chose this route either because he did not know there was a road along
the river (there was, and a good one) or else because he thought the
inland road, leading as it did through piny highlands, would make
for better progress. If this last was what he had in mind, he was mis-
taken in that too. According to one of the marchers, a heavy rain
soon made the single narrow road "more like a broad, deep, red-colored
ditch than anything else." Heavy-footed, sometimes ankle-deep in mire,
they cursed him as they slogged: particularly A. J. Smith's Westerners,
[40] THE CIVIL WAR3T 1864
who by now had acquired a scathing contempt for the former Mas-
sachusetts politician and the men of his five divisions, mainly Easterners
from New York and New England. Paper-collar dudes, they called
them, and referred with grins to the general himself, whose lack of
military training and acumen was common gossip around their camp-
fires, as "Napoleon P. Banks" or, even more scornfully, "Mr Banks."
Nor was the poor condition of the road itself the worst of the
disadvantages an inland march involved. Beyond Natchitoches, in ad-
dition to being deprived of the support of Porter's heavy guns, the
westering column would encounter few streams or wells, which would
make for thirsty going, and little or nothing in the way of food or feed.
One look at the sparsely settled region back from the river convinced
a newsman that "such a thing as subsisting an army in a country like
this could only be achieved when men and horses can be induced to
live on pine trees and resin." Fortunately — at least from the subsistence
point of view — Banks had brought along a great many wagons, no
fewer in fact than a thousand, which assured that his soldiers would
suffer no shortage of bacon or hardtack or coffee while crossing the
barrens, although Smith's gorillas, whom Sherman had accustomed to
traveling light, were so unappreciative as to sneer that they were loaded
with iron bedsteads, feather bolsters, and other such creature comforts
for the city-bred dandies under his command. That was of course false,
or in any case a gross exaggeration, but it was altogether true that those
thousand wagons and their teams did at once decrease the speed and
greatly increase the length of the column: the more so because of the
way they were distributed along it, with an eye for accessibility rather
than for delivering or receiving an attack. Up front was a division of
cavalry, followed by its train of 300 wagons. Next came the three re-
maining infantry divisions (the fourth had been left on guard at Alex-
andria, charged with unloading and reloading supply boats in order
to get them over the low-water falls and rapids) of the two corps that
had slogged up the Teche under Major General William B. Franklin,
top man in the West Point class of 1843, in which he had finished
twenty places above his classmate U. S. Grant, and a veteran of hard
fighting in Virginia. Close behind them came their train of 700 wagons,
with the Corps d'Afrique as escort. A. J. Smith's two remaining divisions
(the third, Kilby Smith's, was taking it easy aboard transports, ascending
Red River with the fleet) brought up the rear. However, so slow was
the progress, so wretched the road, and so strung-out the column
by the accordion action of all those interspersed mules and wagons,
it was not until the following morning that Smith's jeering veterans
lurched into motion out of Grand Ecore. By then the column measured
no less than twenty miles from head to tail: a hard day's march under
better conditions, by far, than here prevailed.
That was April 7, and before it was over Banks had cause to
Another Grand Design [ 41 ]
suspect that he had erred in his estimate of the enemy's intention. Three
miles beyond Pleasant Hill by midafternoon of this second day out,
the cavalry encountered mounted graybacks who, for once, did not
scamper at the threat of contact. Instead, to the dismay of the Federal
horsemen, they set spur to their mounts, some half a dozen regiments or
more, and charged with a wild Texas yell. The bluecoats broke, then
rallied on their reserves; whereupon the rebels fell back, as before. That
was about all there was to it; but the cavalry commander, Brigadier
General Albert Lee, a thirty-year-old former Kansas lawyer, began
to reflect intently on the disadvantages of his situation, particularly with
regard to those 300 wagons directly in his rear, between him and the
nearest infantry support. Several times already he had asked Franklin
to let him shift his train back down the column, combining it with the
infantry's, but Franklin had declined; let the cavalry look after its own
train, he said. Now that the rebs were showing signs of fight, Lee made
the same request again, with a further plea for infantry reinforcements,
and received the same reply to both requests. In fact, when the young
cavalryman tried to make camp near sunset, six miles beyond Pleasant
Hill, Franklin sent word for him to push on four miles farther, train and
all, so that the infantry would have plenty of room to clear the town next
morning. Lee obeyed, though with increased misgivings, and was
brought to a halt at nightfall, just short of his objective, Carroll's Mill,
where he found gray riders once more drawn up in a strong position
directly across his front, midway between Pleasant Hill and Mansfield.
Depressed by the notion of what was likely to result if he was
struck by superior numbers on the march next day, he repeated his
plea for reinforcements to Colonel John S. Clark, one of Banks's aides,
who came forward that night to see how things were going. The
colonel, agreeing that things were not going well, or in any case that the
danger Lee foresaw was possible, rode back to present the cavalry-
man's request to Franklin in person, only to have him refuse it as flatly
as before. So Clark returned to Pleasant Hill, where headquarters had
been established that afternoon, for a conference with the army com-
mander. Banks agreed that caution was in order, overruled Franklin,
and directed him to send a brigade of infantry to reinforce the cavalry
by daybreak. Franklin did so, though it went against his grain, and when
Lee started forward next morning at sunrise he was pleased to find the
rebel horsemen once more fading back from contact after each long-
range exchange of shots, apparently intimidated by the steely glint of
bayonets down the column, which signified that the front-riding cavalry
now had close-up infantry support.
This continued for half a dozen miles: quick spatters of small-
arms fire, followed by sudden gray withdrawals. It was hard for Lee
to tell whether the Johnnies were really afraid of him or only pre-
tending to be, in order to lure him on. Then the head of the column
[42] THE CIVIL WAR3S-1864
emerged from the dense pine woods to find itself on the rim of a large
clearing, half a mile deep and half again as wide, with a broad, low hill
in the center, on whose crest he saw a line of butternut skirmishers. He
halted, brought his infantry to the front, and sent them forward, text-
book style. The gray pickets gave ground before the massed advance,
but when Lee rode up to the crest of the hill down whose opposite
slope the rebs had scrambled for safety, he found his worst fears
realized. There below him, in the woods along the far edge of the
clearing, stretched a Confederate line of battle: not merely cavalry
now, he saw, but infantry too, in heavy files, with artillery mixed in.
It was Taylor, and it was here, within twenty miles of the Texas
border — only that bit short of having retreated across the entire
width of his home state, leaving its people to the by no means tender
mercy of the self-styled "gorillas" in his wake — that he was de-
termined to make his stand. Last night, on his own initiative, he had sent
Churchill word to march at dawn from Keatchie, twenty miles away;
after which (but no sooner than the sun was four hours high, lest there
be time for his order to be countermanded) he got off a note to Kirby
Smith at Shreveport, saying laconically of Banks: "I consider this as
favorable a point to engage him at as any other."
Sabine Crossroads, the place was called, three miles short of Mans-
field, where four roads forked. One led east, allowing the Federals a
chance to effect an early junction with their fleet; another branched
northwest to Keatchie, which would place them in the path of the
reinforcements moving toward him; while the other two ran generally
north along parallel routes, giving the invaders a straight shot at
Shreveport. Once they were where those four roads came together,
free to choose whichever fit their fancy, Taylor's hope of blocking
them would be gone, along with his chance to catch them out from
under the umbrella protection of their heavy naval guns, strung out
on a narrow, ditchlike road in a single, wagon-choked column. More-
over, in considering the tactical opportunity Banks was thus affording
him, he had more in mind than a mere defensive stand, whatever
numerical odds he might encounter. Like his old mentor in the Shenan-
doah Valley, he hoped to inflict what Stonewall had sometimes called
"a speedy blow" or, more often, "a terrible wound."
Accordingly, while Tom Green and his Texans continued the
harassment they had begun in earnest three miles this side of Pleasant
Hill, Taylor chose his field of fight and began to make his preparations,
including the summoning of the two infantry divisions then at Keatchie.
The two already with him, under Major General J. G. Walker and
Brigadier General Alfred Mouton, were ordered to return at first
light, from Mansfield back to Sabine Crossroads, where they would
take position along the near edge of the clearing, respectively on the
right and left of the road that crossed the low hill just ahead. Cavalry
Another Grand Design [ 43 ]
under Brigadier Generals Hamilton Bee and James Major would
guard the flanks, and a four-gun battery, posted astride the road, would
stiffen the center. In Mansfield itself, by way of further preparation,
private houses were selected and put in order for use as hospitals, and
surplus wagons were sent rearward to clear the streets. Taylor was
leaving as little as possible to chance, though he was also prepared to
seize upon anything chance offered in the way of tactical opportunities;
Green's troopers, for example, the most experienced and dependable
body of men in his command, were to be employed wherever they
seemed likely to prove most useful in that regard when they arrived. This
force of 9000 infantry, cavalry, and artillery would be increased to
13,500 when Churchill got there, and though Taylor would not enjoy
a numerical superiority even then — there were 20,000 blue effectives
in the twenty-mile-long column toiling toward him — he intended
to make up for that with the sheer fury of his attack, which he would
design to make the most of his intimate knowledge of the ground,
having chosen it with just that aim in mind. Nor was terrain the only
advantage on which he based his belief that he would win when it came
to shooting. "My confidence of success in the impending engagement
was inspired by accurate knowledge of the Federal movements," he later
wrote, adding that he was encouraged as well by previous acquaintance
with "the character of their commander, General Banks, whose measure
had been taken in the Virginia campaigns of 1862 and since."
By midmorning, April 8, he had established the line of battle the
blue cavalry commander found confronting him when he topped the
hill at midday. Young Lee sent back at once for additional reinforce-
ments, meantime getting his batteries into positions from which to
probe the gray defenses. A long-range artillery duel ensued, in the
course of which Banks arrived in person for a look at the situation. He
was undismayed. In fact, this was precisely what he had said he wanted
on the day he set out from Grand Ecore: "The main force of the
enemy was at last accounts in the vicinity of Mansfield, on the stage
road between Natchitoches and Shreveport, and the major general
commanding desires to force him to give battle, if possible, before
he can concentrate behind the fortifications of Shreveport or effect
a retreat westerly into Texas." Warned now by Lee that, in his opinion,
"we must fall back immediately, or we must be heavily reinforced,"
Banks told him to hold what he had; he himself would "hurry up the
infantry." That took time, partly because the cavalry train had two or
three miles of the road blocked, but about 3.30 the other brigade of
Franklin's lead division arrived to join the first. Hard on its heels
came a courier with instructions for Lee to advance immediately on
Mansfield. Shocked — for the town was three miles beyond the enemy
line of battle, and he estimated that the rebels "must have some 15,000
or 20,000 men there; four or five times as many as I had" — the young
[44 J THE CIVIL WAR^1864
cavalryman rode in search of Banks, who confirmed the validity of the
order. Paraphrasing his protest, Lee said later: "I told him we could
not advance ten minutes without a general engagement, in which
we would be most gloriously flogged, and I did not want to do it."
Given pause by this, although he was unwilling to abandon the attack,
the army commander at any rate agreed to postpone it until another
division of Franklin's infantry arrived, and he sent a staffer back to see
that it was hurried forward with a minimum of delay.
Dick Taylor had bided his time up to now, but only by the
hardest. Though he affected the unbuttoned, rather languid combat
style of his father, Old Rough-and-Ready, sitting his horse with one
leg thrown across the pommel of his saddle while casually smoking
a cigar, he was anxious to force the issue. At one point, around 2 o'clock,
when he believed he saw bluecoats massing for an attack on his left, he
shifted one of Walker's brigades to Mouton and one of Bee's regiments
to Major, but aside from this he did little except watch for an opening
that would justify going over to the offensive before Churchill arrived
from Keatchie. Meantime the Union buildup continued, although
toward no apparent climax; Banks seemed unwilling to throw the punch
that would invite the counterblow Taylor was eager to deliver. Finally,
just after 4 o'clock, with a scant three hours of daylight still remaining,
he decided to wait no longer. Mouton, on the strengthened left, was
told to go forward.
He did so, promptly: "like a cyclone," one blue defender later
said, while another described the charging graybacks as "infuriated
demons." Mouton was among the first to fall, thirty-five years old, a
West-Point-trained Shiloh veteran, son of the Creole governor who
had helped to vote Louisiana out of the Union. His senior brigadier,
Camille Armand Jules Marie, Prince de Polignac — "Polecat" to his
Louisianians and Texans, who were unable to pronounce the royal name
of the young Crimea veteran with the dapper beard and spike mustache
— took over and pressed the uphill charge. His unleashed soldiers struck
and broke the Federal right, routing two of the regiments there, and
turned three captured guns on the fugitives as they fled. Taylor, ob-
serving the success of this while it was still in midcareer, sent word
for Walker and Bee to go in, too: which they did, with similar results
on the right, while Green threw his Texans into the melee on the left,
exploiting on horseback the confusion Mouton and Polignac had begun
on foot. All down the line, as the gray chargers emerged from the pine
woods into the clearing to strike at both ends of the confused blue line,
the high-throated rebel yell rang out.
Some on the opposite side did what they could to stay the rout.
"Try to think you're dead and buried," a Massachusetts colonel told
his men, "and you will have no fear." Either they did not try it at all, or
else they tried and found it did not work; in any case, they ran and
Another Grand Design [ 45 ]
kept on running. Apparently it was the abruptness of the assault that
made it so demoralizing, and this applied as much to those in the
rear as to those up front. "Suddenly," a journalist on Banks's staff would
recall, "there was a rush, a shout, the crashing of trees, the breaking down
of rails, the rush and scamper of men. It was as sudden as though a
thunderbolt had fallen among us, and set the pines on fire. I turned to
my companion to inquire the reason of this extraordinary proceeding,
but before he had the chance to reply, we found ourselves swallowed
up, as it were, in a hissing, seething, bubbling whirlpool of agitated
men." Franklin was among them by then, having brought his second
division up the hill in time for it to join the rout and add to the
lengthening casualty list, which would include some 1500 captives and
about half that many killed and wounded. One of these last was
Franklin himself, who was struck by a bullet in the shin and lost his
horse, then took off rearward on a borrowed mount to brace his third
division for the shock about to come. Banks too was intimately involved
in the confusion, and like Franklin he did what he could, which was not
much. Removing his hat for easy recognition, he shouted to the
skulkers running past him on the road: "Form a line here! I know you
will not desert me." He knew wrong. "Hoo!" they cried, and kept
running. So he drew his sword and waved it about; but that worked
no better. By then the fleeing troops had become what one of them
afterwards called "a disorganized mob of screaming, sobbing, hysterical,
pale, terror-stricken men."
Taylor was intent on completing his triumph by pressing the
pursuit. Near sundown there was an interruption by a courier who
arrived from Shreveport with a letter Kirby Smith had written that
morning, urging caution. "A general engagement now could not be
given with our full force," he advised. "Reinforcements are moving
up — not very large, it is true. . . . Let me know as soon as you are
convinced that a general advance is being made and I will come to the
front." Taylor scanned it hastily, then looked up smiling. "Too late,
sir," he said. "The battle is won." However, he took time to get off
a dispatch announcing the victory to his chief, so far as it had been ac-
complished up to now. "Will report again at the close of the action,"
he ended the message. "Churchill's troops were not up in time
to take part [but] will be fresh in the morning. I shall push the enemy
to the utmost."
He did not wait for morning; Jackson-style, he made full use of
the hour of daylight still remaining, though the going was as rough
for him as it was for the retreating Federals. Panicky teamsters, unable
to turn around on the narrow road, had unhitched their mules for a
mounted getaway and left the wagons behind as a barricade against
pursuit, their bare tongues extended at all angles to trip the unwary.
One result of this was the denial of the road to such guns as had avoided
[46] THE CIVIL WAR3T1864
capture up to then; Taylor took no less than twenty of them in all,
along with ten times as many wagons, some with and some without their
teams, but all loaded. Meantime Franklin was putting his third division,
which was as large as the other two combined, into a stout defensive
position along a ridge just back from a creek in a ravine about
four miles from Sabine Crossroads. The pursuers came up raggedly,
attacked piecemeal in the dusk, and were repulsed. Taylor knew it was
time to call a halt, but not quite yet if his men were to have water for
the night; so he contented himself with driving the blue pickets back
to their ridge and taking possession of the creek in the ravine. There
he stopped, intending to renew the pressure in the morning, and the
firing died away in the darkness, giving place to a silence broken only
by the wounded crying for water and by the scavengers, back up the
road, reveling on the good things found in the captured Yankee train.
As one of his own generals had predicted at the outset, to his face,
Banks had been "most gloriously flogged." Out of 12,000 Federals en-
gaged, 2235 had been killed, wounded, or captured, while Taylor,
with 9000, had lost less than half as many. Nor was that the worst of it,
by any means. In addition to twenty guns and two hundred wagons,
Banks had also lost time — the one thing he could least afford to lose
if he was to occupy Shreveport and get Sherman's soldiers back to him
on schedule. And to make matters worse, caught as he was without
water for his parched troops on the ridge, he must lose still more time by
retreating still farther to reach another stream and another stout
position in which to defend himself from the blood-thirsty graybacks,
whom he could hear feasting on their spoils, back up the road, and who
obviously intended to have another go at him tomorrow, probably at
daylight. Even if he could stay here all night without water, it was
doubtful whether A. J. Smith's two divisions, camped a dozen miles
away at Pleasant Hill, could arrive in time for a share in the defense. A
council of war advised the obvious, and the withdrawal got under way
at 10 o'clock. By midnight all the survivors were on the march in a
bedraggled column made up largely of stragglers blown loose from
their commands, "men without hats or coats, men without guns or
accoutrements, cavalrymen without horses and artillerymen without
cannon, wounded men bleeding and crying at every step, men be-
grimed with smoke and powder, all in a state of fear and frenzy."
One among them saw them so, yet supposed in his extreme dis-
tress that Banks was the most dejected man of all. He had left Grand
Ecore expecting to be in Shreveport within four days, yet here he was,
marching in the opposite direction into the dawn of that fourth day. As
he rode among his trudging men it must have begun to occur to him
that a great deal more than the van of his army had been wrecked at
Sabine Crossroads. Any general who could not capture Shreveport with
the odds as much in his favor as these had been was not likely to be given
Another Grand Design [ 47 ]
the chance to take Mobile. And without that feather in his cap, his
chances of occupying the White House were considerably diminished,
if not abolished, especially when he recalled the scapegoat hunt that
invariably followed every failure such as the one in which he was now
involved. Who that scapegoat was likely to be, he knew only too well;
perhaps he even had time to regret the cotton speculators he had sent
back to New Orleans "without their sheaves," and who were there now,
"mouthing calumnies." He was indeed dejected by the time he drew
near Pleasant Hill, having failed to spot a good defensive position any-
where along the road, though it may well have improved his outlook to
find A. J. Smith's hard fighters already disposed for battle and looking
determined. "If it comes to the worst," an Iowa colonel had told his
troops when he called them out at 2 o'clock that morning to give them
news of the defeat a dozen miles away, "I ask of you to show yourselves
to be men."
They showed that, and more, when Taylor came up eleven hours
later, hard on the trail of the dejected bluecoats he had whipped the day
before, and after a two-hour rest halt, required by Churchill's road-worn
Arkansans and Missourians, flung his reinforced victors forward with
orders for them to "rely on the bayonet, as we had neither time nor am-
munition to waste."
This was bravely said, but it was far from easily done. Taking
heart from the stalwart look of Sherman's veterans, Banks had spent the
morning hours preparing to defend the low, open, house-dotted plateau
known felicitously as Pleasant Hill. During this time, according to a
newsman, the area "had the appearance of a parade ground on a holiday,
regiments marching to the right, regiments marching to the left, batteries
being moved and shifted." Near the center of all this activity, in the yard
of a house affording a panoramic view of the line thus being drawn, the
journalist observed "a small cluster of gentlemen to whom all this
phantasmagoria had the meaning of life and death, and power, and
fame." It was Banks, surrounded by his chief lieutenants. He wore his
light blue overcoat buttoned high against the April chill, and he passed
the time "strolling up and down, occasionally conversing with a member
of his staff or returning the salute of a passing subaltern." Franklin was
there, limping on his wounded leg, his manner calm except for an oc-
casional nervous tug at his whiskers, and so were A. J. Smith, sunlight
glinting on his spectacles, and Brigadier General Charles P. Stone, who,
after six months of confinement in army prisons and nine of unemploy-
ment, had been militarily resurrected by Banks as his chief of staff, thus
giving the West Pointer a chance to dispel the cloud of suspicion that
had gathered about his head and caused his arrest following Ball's Bluff,
where he was accused of having treasonably exposed his men to slaugh-
ter. Not yet forty, "a quiet, retiring man who is regarded, by the few
that know him, as one of the finest soldiers of our time," Stone sat on a
[ 4 8] THE CIVIL WAR^ 1864
rail fence, smoking cigarettes — a modern touch; cigarettes would con-
tinue to be rare and exotic until well into the following decade — and
seemed to the reporter "more interested in the puffs of smoke that
curled around him than in the noise and bustle that filled the air."
Gradually the noise and bustle died away as the various outfits
settled down in their assigned positions and the day wore on and grew
warmer. The genial cluster of uniformed gentlemen began to seem to
the newsman "a rather tedious party," and apparently they themselves
were of much the same opinion. Having done all they could in the way
of preparation, the gold braid wearers had nothing to do now but wait,
and while they did so they milled about rather aimlessly; "group after
group formed and melted away," the reporter noted, "and re-formed
and discussed the battle of the evening before, and the latest news and
gossip of New Orleans, and wondered when another mail would come."
Whatever tedium his lieutenants might be experiencing, Banks had
felt his confidence rise steadily with the sun. By noon, when the generals
broke for lunch, he had convinced himself there would be no serious
fighting today, and afterward, digesting the excellent meal while the
sun swung past the overhead and began its long decline, he took such
heart that he began to think of recovering the initiative and thereby re-
pairing the damage his reputation had suffered yesterday. Surely Grant
and Lincoln would forgive him for being a little behind schedule if he
emerged from these piny highlands with a substantial victory in his
grasp. He would go back over to the offensive; he would redeem his
failure; he would salvage his career. Though his train was already well
on its way to Grand Ecore — what was left of it, at any rate — he made
up his mind to resume the advance on Shreveport, and he got off a
message saying as much to Porter. "I intend to return this evening on the
same road with General Franklin's and General A. J. Smith's commands,"
he informed the admiral. Today was Saturday, and he added that he
expected "to be in communication with the transports of General Kilby
Smith and the gunboats at Springfield Landing on Sunday evening or
Monday forenoon."
Once more he was wrong in a prediction, but this time it was not
for lack of a tactical success. Aware that the Federals were braced for an
attack from straight ahead, Taylor took his time about deploying for
an end-on strike by Churchill, designed to crumple and roll up the
Union left while Walker held in front; Green meantime would probe
and feint at the enemy right, working his way around it in order to cut
off the expected blue retreat to Grand Ecore, and Polignac would be in
reserve, since his division had suffered two thirds of the casualties yester-
day, though he would of course be committed when the time was ripe.
It was close to 5 o'clock before Churchill, having roused his men from
their two-hour rest, had marched them into position in the woods due
west of the unsuspecting Federal left.
Another Grand Design [ 49 ]
He then went forward with much of the fury Mouton had shown
the day before, provoking similar consternation in the Union ranks.
To one defender, "the air seemed all alive with the sounds of various
projectiles." These ranged, he said, "from the spiteful, cat-like spit of
the buckshot, the ponf of the old-fashioned musket ball and the pee-ee-
zing of the minie bullet, to the roar of the ordinary shell and the
njohoot-er njohoot-er of the Whitworth 'mortar-pestle'; while the shrieks
of wounded men and horses and the yells of the apparently victorious
rebels added to the uproar." Back up the Mansfield road, Green and
Walker chimed in with their guns, contributing new tones to the con-
cert, and now that the assailed enemy flank had begun to crumble, they
put their troops in motion, mounted and dismounted, against the right
and center. Churchill kept up the pressure, gathering prisoners by the
score as Franklin's unstrung men fled eastward across the open ground
of the plateau. Determined to make up for having missed it, the Ar-
kansans and Missourians were intent on restaging yesterday's blue rout,
about which they had heard so much since their arrival from Keatchie
the night before, in time to share in the pursuit but not the glory.
A. J. Smith's two divisions had not been at Sabine Crossroads
either, but they too were very much in the thick of things at Pleasant
Hill: as Churchill's elated attackers soon found out. Smith had seen the
flank give way, the graybacks whooping in pursuit of Franklin's rattled
soldiers, who by now were in flight through the village behind their line,
and had sent a reserve brigade in that direction on the double, soon
following it with other units which he pulled out of his portion of the
line to meet the graver threat. Attempting a wide left wheel, which
would enable them to assault the Federal center from the rear and in
mass, the cheering rebels at the extremity of the pivot were caught end-on
by the advancing blue brigade, freezing the cheers in their throats and
bringing them to a huddled, stumbling halt. They wavered, lashed by
sheets of fire, and then gave way, not in a single rush but in fragments,
as regiment after regiment came unhinged. They made one stand, in a
heavy growth of cane along a creekbank they had passed on their way
in, but Smith's Westerners came after them with a roar, delivering point-
blank volleys and finally closing with clubbed muskets; whereupon the
gray withdrawal, already touched with panic, degenerated abruptly into
a rout. Now it was the Federals doing the whooping and the crowing,
and the Confederates doing the running, as the counterattack grew into
a grand right wheel, pivoting irresistibly on the retaken village of
Pleasant Hill, so recently overrun by gray attackers.
Taylor saw and tried to forestall the sudden reverse, but Walker
had just been carried from the field with a bullet in his groin, Green was
intent on maneuvering to cut off the expected blue retreat, and Polignac
could not come up through the gathering dusk in time for anything more
than a try at discouraging the exultant pursuit. This he managed to do,
[50] THE CIVIL WAR»"1864
holding a line two miles from the scene of the break, while the other
three divisions fell back another four miles to the nearest water. The
battle was over and Taylor had lost it, along with three guns abandoned
when his flankers were themselves outflanked and thrown into sudden
retreat. With some 12,500 men engaged, the Confederates had suffered
a total of 1626 casualties, while the Federals, with about the same num-
ber on the field, had lost 1369. Though it was by no means as great as
yesterday's, when fortune had smiled on the other side and blood had
flowed more freely, Banks knew whom to thank for this disparity, along
with much else. When the firing stopped and the rebels had passed out
of sight in the pines and darkness, he rode over to A. J. Smith and took
him gratefully by the hand. "God bless you, General," he said. "You
have saved the army."
Tremendously set up by the sudden conversion of near-certain
defeat to absolute victory, he was more anxious than ever to get back
on the track to Shreveport, and he not only said as much to Smith while
shaking his hand; he also sent a message instructing Albert Lee, who was
riding escort, to turn the wagon train around and come back to Pleasant
Hill. However, when he returned to headquarters to confer with
Franklin and two of his brigadiers, William H. Emory and William
Dwight — both had commanded divisions under Banks for more than a
year, and both had always given him dependable advice — he found all
three West Pointers opposed to resuming the offensive, especially in the
precipitous manner he proposed. Franklin and Emory favored an east-
ward march across Bayou Pierre to Blair's Landing on the Red, there to
reunite with Kilby Smith, secure a safe supply line, and regain the pro-
tection of the fleet, whereas Dwight urged a return to Grand Ecore for
the same purpose. This last was much the safest course, and Banks, his
enthusiasm quenched by this dash of cold water from the high-ranking
trio of professionals, decided to adopt it. Orders went out for an im-
mediate resumption of the retreat.
When word of this reached A. J. Smith he went at once to protest
what seemed to him a loss of backbone. Banks refused to reconsider his
decision, citing his lack of supplies, his loss in the past two days of just
over 3600 men, and the advice of all his other generals. Smith then
asked for time at least to bury his dead and finish gathering up his
wounded, but Banks declined that too. Furious, the bespectacled Penn-
sylvanian, his gray-streaked whiskers bristling with indignation, went
to Franklin, whom he found enjoying a cup of coffee, and proposed that,
as second in command, he put Banks in arrest and take charge of the
army for a rapid advance on Shreveport. Franklin stirred and sipped
his coffee, nursed his injured shin, and said quietly: "Smith, don't you
know this is mutiny?" That ended the protest, if not the anger. In the
small hours after midnight, leaving their non-walking wounded behind
— the train had left that morning with all the wagons: including
Another Grand Design [ 51 ]
through some mixup, those containing the army's medical supplies — the
weary bluecoats formed ranks and slogged away from the scene of their
victory, down the road to Grand Ecore.
Ten miles in the opposite direction, up the Aiansfield road at
Carroll's Mill, Taylor was wakened from his badly needed sleep at
10 o'clock that night by Kirby Smith, who had learned of the Sabine
Crossroads fight at 4 o'clock that morning and left Shreveport at once
to join his army in the field, only to find at the end of his sixty-mile
horseback ride that still a second unauthorized battle had been fought.
What was worse, even though this one had been lost, Taylor seemed
intent on provoking a third — with any number of others to follow, so
long as his blood was up and anything blue remained within his reach.
It was more or less clear to Smith by now that if the Louisianian was
left to his own devices he would use up the army entirely, leaving him
nothing with which to defend his Transmississippi headquarters and
supply base from an amphibious assault by Porter, whose gunboats and
gorilla-laden transports were at Loggy Bayou, within pouncing dis-
tance of Shreveport, and/or an overland attack by Steele, whose troops
had crossed the Little Missouri five days ago, brushing Price's horsemen
casually aside, and by now might well be closer to their goal than its
supposed defenders were at Carroll's Mill. Informed of this, Taylor
increased his chief's dismay by proposing to ignore that double threat
in order to keep the heat on Banks; both Porter and Steele would with-
draw of their own accord, he argued, as soon as they learned that the
main Federal column had pulled back. Smith would not hear of taking
such a risk, even though Taylor kept insisting that, with Banks on the
run and Porter likely to be stranded by low water, "we had but to
strike vigorously to capture or destroy both." Finally the department
commander ended the discussion with a peremptory order for the in-
fantry to take up the march for Shreveport the following day. If the
danger there was as slight as Taylor claimed, he could return and try
his hand at the destruction he had in mind downriver.
The result next morning was a rather unusual tactical situation
wherein two armies, having met and fought, retreated in opposite direc-
tions from the field for which they had presumably been contending. It
was made even more unusual, perhaps, by the fact that the victors were
unhappier than the losers, and this was especially true of the two com-
manders. Disgruntled though Taylor was at having been overruled by
his superior, Banks was put through the worse ordeal of being sneered
at by his military inferiors, all the way down to the privates in the ranks.
Taking their cue from Franklin, who avoided such blame as came his
way by letting it be known that he would never have recommended a
withdrawal if the army had had a competent general at its head, even
regimental commanders looked askance at Banks as he rode by them,
doubling the column. The men themselves did more than exchange sly
[52] THE CIVIL WAR35-1864
glances. Angry because some four hundred of their wounded comrades
had been left behind to be nursed and imprisoned by the rebels, they
began the march in a mutinous frame of mind, muttering imprecations.
But presently the company clowns took over. After the manner of all
soldiers everywhere, in all ages, they began to ridicule their plight and
mock at the man who had caused it, inventing new words for old songs
which they chanted as they slogged. For example, in remembrance of
Bull Run:
In eighteen hundred and sixty -one
We all skedaddled to Washington.
In eighteen hundred and sixty-] our
We all skedaddled to Grand Ecore.
Napoleon P. Banks/
This last — "Napoleon P. Banks!" — was shouted for good measure as
the general rode past, and recurred as a refrain in all the parodies they
sang. Nor were such high jinks limited, as before, to A. J. Smith's ir-
reverent gorillas. Banks's own men, whom he had commanded at Port
Hudson and through the easy-living months in New Orleans, took up
the songs and bawled them as he passed along the roadside, trailing a
kite tail of smirking officers from his staff.
Fortunately, they had nothing worse to contend with, in the way
of opposition on the march, than butternut cavalry which mainly limited
its attention to stragglers until near the end of the second day, April 1 1,
when it made a cut-and-slash attack that drove the rear brigade into
Grand Ecore on the run. Once there, their prime concern was to protect
themselves from the vengeful Taylor, who was reported to be hard on
their heels with 25,000 effectives. They themselves would not have that
many on hand until Franklin's fourth division came up the Red from
Alexandria and A. J. Smith's third division returned from Loggy Bayou
with the fleet, whose heavy guns they presently heard booming in the
distance, apparently involved in some kind of trouble far upstream.
Meantime they kept busy constructing a semicircular line of intrench-
ments around the landward side of the high-sited village on its bluff.
They worked hard and well, incorporating the trunks and tops of large
trees which they felled for use as breastworks and abatis. Not only did
they require no urging from their officers in this work; they kept at it
after they were told that they could stop.
"You don't need any protection. We can whip them easily here,"
Franklin chided a detail of diggers as he rode on a tour of inspection.
But they remembered Sabine Crossroads and the hilltop they had
lost to a savage rebel charge: the result, they now believed, of having
trusted their security to generals like this one. They kept digging.
"We have been defeated once," a spokesman replied, leaning on
his shovel, "and we think we will look out for ourselves."
Another Grand Design [ 53 ]
In point of fact they were by no means in such danger as they
feared. Far from closing on their heels, Taylor's four divisions of in-
fantry were fifty muddy miles away at Mansfield, marched there against
his wishes in order to have them within supporting distance of Shreve-
port. And even when it turned out that the withdrawal had been un-
necessary because his prediction was fulfilled — Steele veered from his
southwest course on April 1 2 for an eastward strike at Camden, which
would put him as far from Shreveport as he had been when he crossed
the Little Missouri a week ago, and Porter not only ventured no farther
up the Red, he was even now bumping his way downstream in an effort
to rejoin Banks — Taylor constituted no real threat to the Federals in-
trenched at Grand Ecore, even though he was free at last to move
against them, since he had by then a good deal less than one fourth the
number of soldiers his adversary believed he was about to use in an all-
out assault on the blufftop citadel. Convinced by captured dispatches
that Banks would soon be obliged to withdraw if he was to get Sher-
man's troops across the Mississippi within the little time remaining, Kirby
Smith believed there would be small profit in pursuing him through a
region exhausted of supplies. Instead, he decided to go in person after
Steele, who was still a threat, and for this purpose he took from Taylor
not only Churchill's Arkansans and Missourians, who had been lent to
help in stopping Banks, but also Walker's Texans, who would now return
the favor by helping to stop Steele. That left the Louisiana commander
with barely 5000 men in all: Polignac's infantry, bled down to fewer
than 2000 effectives, and Green's cavalry, which numbered only a little
above 3000, including a small brigade that had just arrived. In any case,
however few they were, on April 14 he started them southward for
Grand Ecore, where the bluecoats had obligingly penned themselves up,
as if in a stockyard, awaiting slaughter.
Taylor himself went up to Shreveport next day, on the outside
chance that he could persuade his chief to countermand the orders which
he believed would deprive him of a golden opportunity. "Should the
remainder of Banks' army escape me I shall deserve to wear a fool's
cap for a helmet," he had said the week before, but now that his force
had been reduced by more than half he was less confident of the out-
come: especially when he learned that Tom Green, while attempting to
add to the problems of the Union fleet in its withdrawal down the still-
falling Red, had been killed two days ago in an exchange of fire with the
gunboats at Blair's Landing, twenty miles above Grand Ecore. A veteran
of the Texas war for independence, the A4exican War, the horrendous
New Mexico expedition of early 1862, and the retaking of Galveston,
the fifty-year-old Hero of Valverde had been Taylor's most dependable
lieutenant in last year's fighting on the Teche and the Atchafalaya, as
well as in the campaign still in progress down the Red. His loss was
nearly as heavy a blow as the loss of the three divisions about to set out
[54] THE CIVIL WAR^" 1864
for Arkansas, and caused Taylor to redouble his efforts to have them
returned while there was still a chance to overtake and destroy the in-
vaders of Louisiana, afloat and ashore. But Kirby Smith was not to be
dissuaded; Steele was the major danger now, and he intended to go after
him in strength. "Should you move below and Steele's small column
push on and accomplish what Banks has failed in, and destroy our shops
at Jefferson and Marshall," he told Taylor, "we will not only be dis-
graced, but irreparably deprived of our means and resources."
Accordingly, he left Shreveport on April 16, taking Walker
and Churchill with him. Taylor stayed on for two more days, ar-
ranging for the shipment of supplies, and then set out on the 19th to
join what he called "my little force near Grand Ecore." He was still
hopeful that the Federals could be bagged, despite the disparity in num-
bers, and he counted on using deception to that end. Compelled, as he
said, "to eke out the lion's skin with the fox's hide," he had instructed
his unit commanders to keep Banks on edge, and deceived as to their
strength, "by sending drummers to beat calls, lighting campfires, blow-
ing bugles, and rolling empty wagons over fence rails."
All this they had done, and more, with such effect that when
Taylor dismounted near Grand Ecore on the evening of April 21, end-
ing his ninety-mile ride, he found that the Federals had begun to pull
out of the place that afternoon. The head of their column was already
beyond Natchitoches, slogging south in an apparent attempt to take up a
safer position at Alexandria, if not to get away entirely. Determined not
to permit this, Taylor set about planning how to intercept the retiring
bluecoats and, if possible, bring them to battle, although they out-
numbered him five to one, exclusive of their heavily gunned flotilla.
Their march was down the narrow "island" lying between Cane River
and the Red, and it was his hope to force them into a strung-out halt
that would give him a chance to go to work on them piecemeal. With
this in mind, he sent Bee's brigade of cavalry on a fast ride south to
Monett's Ferry, forty miles away at the far end of the island, with in-
structions to block the crossing of the Cane at that point, so that the
rest of his troops could be thrown upon some vulnerable segment of
the blue column stalled between there and Natchitoches. This was an
ambitious undertaking for some 5000 men opposed by 25,000, but Taylor
undertook it gladly, anticipating the Cannae he had been seeking all
along.
Banks anticipated much the same thing, and moved rapidly to
avoid it if he could. He was by now, as a result of the strain of the past
ten days, about as edgy as even Taylor could have wished, and this
edginess had been provoked by more than the various nerve- jangling
ruses those "22,000 to 25,000" graybacks had been practicing in the
woods beyond his semicircular line. For one, there was a growing sense
of failure. He still had spasms and flickers of hope, during which he
Another Grand Design [ 55 ]
planned to go back over to the offensive, but these grew fewer and
weaker as the days wore on, until finally they stopped. For another,
he had found waiting for him at Grand Ecore a message from Sherman,
notifying him that his lease on A. J. Smith's three divisions had expired
and ordering their immediate return. This could be ignored or counter-
manded because of the exigencies of the situation, which plainly would
permit no such detachment; but a few days later, on April 18, he re-
ceived from Grant a follow-up letter of instructions that had for him,
in his present hemmed-in state, a sound of hollow mockery not so easily
dismissed. Written at the end of March, it set forth in some detail the
procedure he was to follow, once Shreveport had been taken, in moving
without delay against Mobile. "You cannot start too soon," the letter
ended. "All I would now add is that you commence the concentration of
your force at once. Preserve a profound secrecy of what you intend
doing, and start at the earliest possible moment."
That was perhaps the crudest blow; Grant had written as if in
fervid haste, lest time be wasted between the fall of Shreveport, ap-
parently expected momentarily, and the arrival of his letter urging Banks
to be quick in taking the road to glory, which led from Shreveport to
the White House, by way of Mobile, Atlanta, and Richmond. Contrast-
ing what was with what might have been — for the road's only en-
trance, for him, was Shreveport, and he could not get there to take it —
the former Bay State governor was correspondingly depressed. He
relieved his spleen to some degree, however, with a pair of summary
dismissals. One was of Stone, his chief of staff (Stone took no further
part in the war, though afterwards he served the Khedive of Egypt in
the same capacity for thirteen years, with the rank of lieutenant general,
and then returned to act as chief engineer in the construction of the
pedestal for the Statue of Liberty) ; Banks let him go because he found
him "very weak," and the same might have been said of young Albert
Lee, whom he relieved of duty as cavalry commander and sent back to
New Orleans, although not without regret. He testified later that Lee
had been "active, willing, and brave," if not skillful, and had "suffered,
more or less unjustly, as all of us did, for being connected with that
affair."
Such administrative corrections had little effect on a tactical situa-
tion which seemed to be growing increasingly grim as the rebels out in
the brush continued to beat drums, build a myriad of campfires, blow
bugles, and bring up what sounded like thousands of wagonloads of
supplies and ammunition. For what purpose all this was being done
Banks could only guess, but with every passing hour he was brought
closer to the inevitable conclusion that if he could not go forward, as
was obviously the case, then he would do well not to postpone going
back. This applied most of all to Porter's gunboats, for the river was
still falling: was already down, in fact, to half the seven-foot depth re-
[56] THE CIVIL WAR3T1864
quired to float them over the double falls at Alexandria. The thing to
do was get back there as soon as possible, before the river took another
perverse drop, for a close-up look at what was reported to be an im-
possible situation. So the admiral advised, although the temptation was
strong to remain where he was, under the friendly bluff at Grand Ecore,
his recent trip to Loggy Bayou having given him all too graphic a
preview of what to expect in the course of his return to the Mississippi,
down those more than three hundred winding miles of the Red. "It is
easy to die here, and there are many ways of doing it," a sailor diarist had
observed en route. In addition to the more or less normal dangers in-
volved in descending a swift and crooked river at the speed required
to maintain steerage — staved-in bows, unshipped rudders, broken
wheels, and punctured hulls, all brought on by collisions with other
boats, with underwater snags, with the iron-hard red clay bottom —
there were the rebels to contend with, fast-firing marksmen who shot
at passing or stalled vessels from hidden positions along both banks. At
Blair's Landing, for example, where Tom Green was killed by a blast
of canister, the fleet was exposed to what one veteran skipper called "the
heaviest and most concentrated fire of musketry I have ever witnessed."
As a result of this and other such nightmare encounters at places with
names like Campti and Coushatta Chute, the thirty-boat flotilla got back
from its ten-day upstream excursion sadly altered in appearance:
especially the vessels loaded with Kilby Smith's gorillas, to which the
butternut riflemen and cannoneers had given their particular attention.
"The sides of some of the transports are half shot away," a soldier noted
in his diary on April 15, after watching them come in, "and their smoke-
stacks look like huge pepper boxes."
Porter recommended an immediate return to Alexandria, but Banks
was not quite ready to make so frank an admission of defeat. That took
him another four days, two of which he used to compose a letter to
Grant, explaining that his retrograde movement from A4ansfield had
been due more to a shortage of water and the nonarrival of Steele than
to resistance by the enemy — though he added, rather ingeniously, that
the stubborn quality of the latter had proved the campaign to be "of
greater importance than was generally anticipated at its commencement,"
and asked therefore that he be allowed to continue it beyond schedule,
but only a bit, since "immediate success, with a concentration of our
forces, is within our reach." Knowing Grant's low tolerance for failure,
however skillfully disguised, he did not have much hope that his request
would be granted, and he had even less hope, in case it was, that he
would be continued in command. At the end of the four days (April 19:
the day Taylor set out on his ninety-mile ride from Shreveport) Banks
issued orders for a withdrawal to Alexandria. It got underway two
days later, after A. J. Smith moved out and occupied Natchitoches, from
which point he would cover the retreat by protecting the flanks of the
Another Grand Design [ 57 ]
column as it passed, then follow to serve as rear guard on the long march
down the "island" between the two rivers, Cane and Red.
Whatever shortcomings the invaders had shown in the past forty
days, they demonstrated conclusively, in the course of the next two, that
their ability to cover ground at a fairly dazzling rate of speed not only
had not been impaired, but in fact had been considerably improved by
the events of the past two weeks. The march began at 5 o'clock in the
afternoon, and by the time the tail of the column left Grand Ecore at
3 o'clock next morning, April 22, the men at the head were twenty
miles away, taking their first rest while waiting for the others to close
up. Before nightfall, the entire command had cleared Cloutierville,
thirty-two miles from the starting point. Not even then was the blister-
ing pace relaxed; Banks had learned that the rebels intended to contest
his crossing of the Cane at Monett's Ferry, another dozen miles south-
east, and he pressed on, determined to get off this jungly island and past
the last natural obstacle between him and Alexandria, where he would
recover the protection of the fleet and his army could once more break
out its shovels and throw up dirt between itself and the danger of
assault.
So far, its performance had been highly commendable from the
logistics point of view; nor had it permitted haste to interfere unduly
with the exercise of its various other talents. A. J. Smith's irrepressible
campaigners, while holding off pursuers with one hand, so to speak,
still found time for more than their usual quota of vandalism and destruc-
tion with the other. Grand Ecore had gone up in flames at the outset, along
with the surplus goods the army left behind; then Natchitoches, whose
old-world French and Spanish charm had been admired by many of its
blue-clad visitors, was put to the torch as a farewell gesture. Gray
cavalry came up in time to turn fire-fighters and save the latter place, as
well as Cloutierville the following day, far down the island. But Smith's
troops made up for this double disappointment with the amount of
damage they inflicted on barns and houses along the road between the
two, including even the cabins of the Negroes who turned out to
welcome them. "At night the burning buildings mark our pathway," a
marcher recorded. "As far as the eye can reach, we see in front new
fires breaking out, and in the rear the dying embers tell the tale of war."
Close in their rear with Polignac, while his cavalry harassed their
flanks and rode hard to get into position in their front, Taylor was
finding it "difficult to restrain one's inclination to punish the ruffians
engaged in this work." He meant that the prisoners were a temptation in
that regard — blue-clad stragglers picked up along the roadside, blown
and blistered or drunk on looted whiskey, unable to hold the pace Banks
was setting them in his eagerness to attain the safety Alexandria would
afford — but there was also the temptation for the pursuers to strike
before the tactical iron was hot. Too quick a blow, delivered before
[58] THE CIVIL WARW1864
the Federals had been brought to a disjointed halt on unfavorable terrain,
would merely hasten their march and inflict only superficial damage,
not to mention that it would be likely to disclose the smallness of
Taylor's command; whereas if he waited till their path was blocked he
might be able to bag the lot by tricking them (much as Bedford Forrest
had tricked Abel Streight, about this time last year in Alabama) into
surrendering to the "superior force" Banks believed was breathing down
his neck. However, the Lousianian soon had cause to regret that he had
stayed his hand, forgoing a leaner in hope of a fatter prize. Brigadier
General Richard Arnold, Lee's replacement as chief of the Union
cavalry — a thirty-six-year-old West Pointer, son of a former governor
of Rhode Island and descendant of a distinguished New England family
that included the notorious Benedict — had come upon Bee's dismounted
brigade in a stout defensive position overlooking, from the opposite
bank, the approaches to the Cane at Monett's Ferry. Instead of attempt-
ing the suicidal attack Bee expected, head-on down the road, Arnold
located an upstream crossing for the infantry to use while he kept up a
show of force in front and probed industriously below, as if in search of
another crossing a couple of miles downriver, to attract Bee's attention
in that direction.
It was neatly done. Emory's division, coming up at the head of the
Federal main body on the morning of April 23, crossed the river two
miles above the ferry and struck in force at the upstream rebel flank,
while a second arriving division added its weight to the frontal dem-
onstration and the downstream feint. This last was so well carried out,
indeed, that Bee — a Charleston-born adoptive Texan whose younger
brother had given T. J. Jackson his nom-de-guerre at First iManassas, but
who himself had been a desk soldier until the present campaign — be-
lieved he was swamped on the right as well as the left, though in fact
he had managed to inflict rather heavy casualties on the attackers from
upstream. "The critical moment had come," he later reported; "the
position turned on both flanks and a large force close in front ready
to spring on the center." He counted himself fortunate to get away —
"in good order at a walk," he noted — with a loss of "about 50 men
and 1 artillery wagon . . . while the enemy lost full 400 killed and
wounded," and he complained that, with fewer than 2000 men in all,
he had been expected to block the path of "an army of 25,000 marching
at their leisure on the main road to Alexandria." Yet that was exactly
what had been expected of him, and Taylor was no more inclined to be
charitable in such cases than was the man Bee's brother had caused to be
nicknamed Stonewall. The fact remained that Banks had made his geta-
way, avoiding the destruction planned for him, and Bee had let the
escape hatch be slammed ajar with a loss to himself of only "about 50
men and 1 artillery wagon." Nor was the disparity of losses any mitiga-
tion of the offense. "He displayed great personal gallantry, but no
Another Grand Design \ 59 ]
generalship," Taylor said of the South Carolinian, and ordered his re-
moval from command.
Into the clear at last, though greatly relieved to be out of a jungle
whose gloom seemed made for ambuscades, Banks did not slacken the
pace for his foot-sore troops. He was still not half way to his goal, and he
covered the last fifty miles with something of the hard-breathing
urgency of a long-distance runner entering the stretch and catching sight
of the tape drawn taut across the finish line, ready to be breasted. All
through what was left of that day and the next, molested by nothing
worse than small clusters of Confederate horse taking pot shots at the
column from off in the pines, he kept going hard and fast, his over-all
casualties now increased to about 4000, more than half of them captured
or missing in battle and on the march. On the third day, April 25 — the
fifth since he left Grand Ecore — the lead division slogged into Alex-
andria, followed next day by the others. There they promptly got to
work with their shovels, heaving dirt, despite the recovered protection
of Porter's fleet: what was left of it, at any rate, after an equally strenu-
ous five days of fighting rebels and the river.
The admiral had suffered woes beyond a landman's comprehen-
sion, including the loss of his finest ironclad, the 700-ton Eastport. Sunk
by a torpedo eight miles below Grand Ecore, she was patched and
raised with the help of two pump boats hastily summoned upnver, and
continued on her way — only to ground again in the shallow water forty
miles below. Porter unshipped her four 9-inch guns, along with her other
four 50- and 100-pounder Dahlgren and Parrott rifles, loading them onto
a flat behind the light-draft gunboat Cricket, and thus got her afloat; at
least for a time. She had only gone a few more miles, bumping bottom as
she went, when she ran full tilt into a pile of snags, and there she
stuck and settled. After three days' work by her crew and skipper,
Lieutenant Commander Ledyard Phelps, who could not bear to lose
"the pride of the western waters," Porter, having observed that such
efforts to haul her off only made her stick the harder, gave orders for her
destruction. A ton and a half of powder was distributed about her
machinery and hold. When the electrical detonator failed to work,
Phelps himself, in accordance with the tradition requiring the captain
to be the last to abandon ship, applied a "slow match," then went over
the side and into a waiting launch. The match was almost not slow
enough, however. When the Eastport blew, Phelps was only a short way
off and barely avoided being crushed by one of the dory-sized fragments
from the 280-foot iron hull that came hurtling down and raised huge
red geysers all around the launch.
Porter had a double reason for ordering the ironclad's destruction.
One was that further delay seemed likely to cost him not only the East-
port — which, in point of fact, had been Confederate at the outset,
captured uncompleted up the Tennessee River near the Mississippi town
[60] THE CIVIL WAR3F1864
that gave her her name, just after the fall of Fort Henry in early 1862 —
but his other boats as well. While the attempted salvage work was in
progress, enemy marksmen were gathering on both hostile banks of the
river and adding to his discomfort by sniping at the flotilla. Small-arms
fire, though deadly enough, was only part of the danger; for presently,
emboldened by the absence of the infantry escort now on the march with
Banks, they brought up batteries of horse artillery and opened fire from
masked positions. So intense and accurate was this, Porter lost one of his
unarmored pump boats that afternoon and the other the following morn-
ing, together with all but five of about 175 Negroes, mostly fieldhands
taken aboard from surrounding plantations, who were scalded to death
by steam from a punctured boiler. The gunboats Juliet and Fort Hindman
lost 22 men between them in the course of the downstream run, along
with their stacks and most of their upper works. Hardest hit of all,
though, was the Cricket, now serving as the flagship. Rounding a bend,
she came upon a rebel battery cleverly sited atop a bluff, and took 38
hits within the five minutes she was exposed to its plunging fire. Out of
her crew of fifty, 3 1 were casualties, including a dozen killed. "Every
shot [went] through and through us, clearing all our decks in a moment,"
according to the admiral, who had to take the wheel himself when he
ran up to the pilot house and found the helmsman badly wounded.
This was the firing the soldiers heard at the end of their long
march from Grand Ecore, and when Porter reached Alexandria next
morning, April 27, he saw at close range the validity of his other reason
for having abandoned the deep-draft ironclad far upstream: which was
that, even if he had managed to get her this far down, he would not have
been able to get her one mile farther. The Red had dwindled by now to
a depth of three feet four inches over the falls — two inches less than
half the draft of his heavier gunboats — and there still was no sign that
the river was going to rise at all this spring, if indeed it ever stopped
falling. In fact, it was becoming more evident every day that the fate of
the Eastport was likely to be the fate of every warship in the fleet; that
is, if they were to be kept out of enemy hands. And now there was
added to the admiral's woes, as if this last was not enough, the appre-
hension that he was about to be left on his own by the army. Banks
came aboard the badly shot-up Cricket with a ten-day-old letter just
arrived from the general-in-chief, peremptorily ordering him to desist
from any activity that might cause him to be "detained one day after the
1 st of A4ay in commencing your movement east of the Mississippi." To-
day was Wednesday; May Day was Sunday, barely four days off. "No
matter what you may have in contemplation," Grant had added by way
of emphasis, "commence your concentration, to be followed without
delay by your advance on Mobile."
Knowing how eager the Massachusetts general was to engage in
the very campaign Grant's letter not only authorized but ordered him
Another Grand Design [ 61 ]
to undertake at once, Porter had a nightmare vision of the fleet — or
anyhow the dozen vessels trapped above the falls — being left stranded
high and dry, unprotected from heavy-caliber snipers or highly explosive
underwater devices, its fate restricted to a choice between capture and
self-destruction. If the former was unthinkable, involving as it well
might do the loss of all the navy had won in the past two years on
western rivers, the latter choice was only a bit less so, since either
would mean professional ruin for the admiral himself. Partly his appre-
hension was based on his contempt for Banks, which encouraged him to
think the worst of the one-time politician, especially in regard to his
feeling any obligation to a man who he knew despised him, who was
of a rival and often high-handed branch of the service, and whom he
could protect only by disregarding a direct order from a superior
famed for sternness in such matters.
But in this the admiral did the general wrong. Banks quickly
made it clear that he had no more intention of abandoning the navy
here at Alexandria than he had had at Grand Ecore the week before,
and for much the same reasons. One was that it was not his way, no
matter what Porter might think of him, to desert an associate in distress.
Another was that he still had nearly a hundred downriver miles to go
before he would be out of the Red River country, and he wanted
naval protection all the way. Still another, which would require the
navy's continued support even more, was that he had not completely
given up the notion that he could retrieve his reputation in the region
where he had lost it. Whether he would get that chance depended on
Grant's reply to the letter sent ten days ago from Grand Ecore, suggest-
ing a return to the recently abandoned upriver offensive, provided he
could secure "a concentration of our forces." That meant Steele, who
was long since overdue, but about whose progress Banks knew little
except for a disconcerting rumor that the Arkansas commander had
turned aside from his southwest march on Shreveport for an eastward
lunge at Camden, 165 air-line miles due north of Alexandria and almost
twice that far by the few roads.
Meantime, while waiting to hear again from Grant and finally
from Steele, Banks and Porter — despite their mutual distaste for strik-
ing, even figuratively, so intimate an attitude — put their heads together
in an attempt to solve the apparently insoluble problem of how to get
armored gunboats, drawing seven feet of water, down a still-falling
river whose rocky bottom was in places only three feet four inches be-
low its russet surface.
Steele had been at Camden, just as Kirby Smith had been informed
and Banks had chanced to hear. In fact, he had been there for the past
twelve days, penned up like his supposed partner at Grand Ecore, be-
[6z] THE CIVIL WAR35"1864
hind intrenchments. But he was there no longer. He had pulled out
during the small hours of this same April 27 — headed not for the Red,
as Banks expected and Smith intended to prevent, but back toward Little
Rock, the headquarters he had left five weeks ago today. In the course
of the first three of these he had crossed the Saline, the Ouachita, the
Little Missouri, then the Ouachita once more, along with a number of
lesser streams in a region as wet as the upper Red was dry; now he was
hard on the march for the Saline again, fifty air-line miles to the north,
hoping to put that river between him and his pursuers, a superior force
dead bent on his destruction, and thus bring an end to what a Saint Louis
newsman would presently call "a campaign of forty days in which
nothing has been gained but defeat, hard blows, and poor fare."
Although he seemed on the face of it to have done even worse
than Banks — who, in all conscience, had done poorly enough by almost
any standards, not excluding Pleasant Hill, which amounted to little
more than a pause in his flight before inferior numbers — it could at
least be said of Steele, by way of extenuation, that he had never had a
moment's belief that anything good was going to come of an under-
taking he had protested being involved in from the start. Unlike the
former Massachusetts governor, whose inveterate optimism was inclined
to feed on straws, he had not been lured by cotton or dazzled by stars in
a political firmament which for him did not exist. Yet he had certain
other disadvantages. For one, while Banks merely believed he was out-
numbered, Steele actually was outnumbered, at any rate in the final
stage, when Kirby Smith came after him with all but a handful of the
infantry Dick Taylor had used to drive the larger Federal column pell-
mell down the Red, ironclads and all. The Arkansas commander's losses,
though so far only half as great as those in Louisiana, stood a dis-
mal chance of being considerably greater in the end. Banks had lost some
4000 men to date, but at least he had found sanctuary within the
Alexandria intrenchments: whereas Steele, in northward flight for
Little Rock with hordes of exultant graybacks hot on his trail across
the hundred miles of intervening hinterland, was in grievous danger of
losing about three times that many, the only limit being that that was
all he had. Still, for whatever consolation it was worth, the outcome
could scarcely be direr than he had predicted in response to Halleck's
original suggestion that he move on Shreveport in cooperation with
Banks's ascent of the Red. He could only do so, he wired back, "against
my own judgment and that of the best-informed people here. The roads
are most if not quite impracticable; the country is destitute of provision."
Moreover, he added, if he marched south the butternut guerillas were
likely to hold carnival in North Arkansas and Southwest Missouri, with
predictable results. "If they should form in my rear in considerable force
I should be obliged to fall back to save my depots, &c." He thought it
best not to go at all, in any case not in earnest. A feint at Arkadelphia or
DeWll's Bluff
STEELE
CAMDEN EXPEDITION
[6 4 ] THE CIVIL WAR»*1864
Hot Springs was the most he could recommend as a means of discour-
aging a rebel concentration against Banks, and having said as much —
this was March 12, ten days past the time Old Brains had wanted him to
set out southward — he remained at Little Rock, awaiting a reply. It
came within three days, but not from Washington and not from Halleck.
A brief telegram signed U. S. Grant Lieutenant General arrived from
Nashville on A4arch 15: "Move your force in full cooperation with
General N. P. Banks' attack on Shreveport. A mere demonstration will
not be sufficient."
That was that. Grant might or might not approve of this Trans-
mississippi undertaking, conceived before his appointment as director
of the nation's military effort, but it was clear he wanted it over and done
with in the shortest possible time, and it was equally clear that to
achieve this he intended to employ his accustomed method of bringing
everything available to bear: including Steele. Accordingly, the Arkansas
commander wasted no more energy on appeals which might have in-
fluenced Halleck but would obviously — as he knew from past experi-
ence, first as a classmate at West Point, then as a division commander
in the Vicksburg campaign — do nothing but anger the new general-
in-chief and probably bring on his own dismissal. Rather, he spent the
next eight days preparing to move (an election of delegates to a constitu-
tional convention, requiring the presence of his troops as poll watchers
to protect the reconverted "loyal" ten percent of the state's voters from
as many of the irreconcilable ninety percent as were not already in the
field with Price, had been held the day before, March 14, with predict-
ably satisfactory results) and then on March 23, midway through Holy
Week, he set out.
Originally he had intended to proceed due south down the
Ouachita, by way of Monroe, for a meeting with Banks at Alexandria.
By now, though, it was too late for that; Alexandria had been taken, and
he would scarcely be helping Banks by making him wait for him that far
down the Red. So he chose instead to march southwest, through
Arkadelphia and Washington to reach the upper Red, which he
would then descend for a combination, near Shreveport, with the
amphibious column moat a number of the wounded were "murdered on the spot" by the
vengeful red men. Confederate losses totaled 1 1 5, many of them only
slightly hurt. The Federals lost 301, mostly killed or missing, plus all
their guns and wagons.
By the time the survivors came stumbling back from Poison Spring
that afternoon, Steele had been profoundly shaken by the other half
of the double shock to his nervous system. It had been given him by a
scout sent out the week before to get some news of Banks. Returning
with word that the Louisiana commander had been thrown into re-
verse, first at Sabine Crossroads and then again at Pleasant Hill, the
messenger reported that he had left him at Grand Ecore, three days
back, though where he might be now he did not know. Steele was
quick to perceive the dangers of noncooperation, now that they were
directed at himself. If his supposed partner were to pull out, every
rebel in the Transmississippi would be free to concentrate against
Camden and its hungry garrison, with results no doubt as grisly as those
at Poison Spring this morning. He thought this over for four days,
wincing at the prospect — which was in fact more likely than he yet
knew; Banks left Grand Ecore on the third of these days, beginning
another withdrawal, this time to Alexandria, another ninety miles
downriver — and then appealed to his superiors not to allow him to be
swamped and slaughtered because an adjoining commander lost his
army or his nerve. "Although I believe we can beat Price," he pro-
tested, "I do not expect to meet successfully the whole force which
Kirby Smith could send against me, if Banks should let him go."
Next day, April 23, he heard at last from Banks himself, who pro-
posed, in a dispatch written a week ago at Grand Ecore, before he
decided to withdraw farther down the river, that Steele march south
at once to join him on the Red for a resumption of the advance upriver.
"If you can join us on this line," Banks told him, "I am confident we
can move to Shreveport without material delay, and that we shall have
an opportunity of destroying the only organized rebel army west of the
Mississippi."
Steele wanted no part of such an operation, and frankly said as
much that same day in his reply. "Owing to contingencies," he wrote,
"it is impossible for me to say definitely that I will join you at any
point on Red River within a given time." Among the contingencies,
he was careful to say, was Price's army, which was not only highly
"organized," whatever Banks might imply to the contrary, but had
recently been "very much encouraged by an order of General E. K.
Smith, detailing his success against your command." He wished Banks
well in whatever he might undertake of an offensive nature down in
Louisiana, but as for himself, he had his hands full where he was; "I
desire to cooperate with you in the best manner possible, at the same
time covering Arkansas until Shreveport shall be ours." Moreover, he
Another Grand Design [ 71 ]
informed the man he held responsible for a large part of the woes
he now saw looming, "We have been receiving yesterday and today
rumors of reinforcements sent by Kirby Smith to Price at this point,
and of a contemplated attack. It is said that 8000 infantry have arrived. ,,
Interrupted by the jar of guns, he set his pen aside to look into the
cause of the disturbance, then took it up again with something of the
perverse satisfaction of a prophet watching his gloomiest fears ma-
terialize in fact. "They have just opened upon my outposts with
artillery," he continued. "This may be to get as near our lines as
possible tonight, preparatory to a general attack tomorrow morning."
He was wrong about the attack next morning. Rather than a
prelude to assault, the boom of guns was part of a design to frighten
him into retreat. But he was altogether right about the rebel reinforce-
ments and his adversary's intention to make bloody use of them. Kirby
Smith had arrived three days ago from Shreveport, accompanied by
three divisions of infantry flushed with pride for their recent victory
over Banks, and he had it in mind to bag the Camden garrison entirely:
in which case, he said later, "the prize would have been the Arkansas
Valley and the fortifications of Little Rock," to be used in turn, quite
possibly, as a base from which to recover the offensive in Missouri.
Before this ambitious program for reversing the tide of war could be
placed in execution, however, Steele would have to be disposed of,
and Smith had no intention of trying to do so by attacking him in his
intrenchments, either at Camden or at Little Rock. He preferred to
catch him out in the open, between the two, after frightening or forcing
him into attempting a retreat across the intervening barrens, where the
blue column could be intercepted and cut to pieces by the now su-
perior gray force. The infantry-artillery demonstration of April 23
having resulted only in causing the Federals to button themselves more
tightly in their works, Smith intensified his efforts to smoke them out
by disrupting their supply lines, particularly those beyond the Ouachita,
which Price had not felt strong enough to threaten up to now. Ac-
cordingly, while the Camden demonstration was in progress, Fagan
crossed the river at Eldorado Landing, twenty miles downstream, with
instructions to use his division, reinforced to a strength of more than
3000 by the addition of Shelby's brigade, to strike at logistical targets
along the Saline and the Arkansas, as well as along the roads that ran
between and across them, from Little Rock and Pine Bluff, down to
Camden. The result was not long in coming, and when it came it was
as decisive, on a larger scale, as the rout at Poison Spring.
Crossing the Ouachita on the morning of April 24, Fagan was
informed by Shelby's scouts, who had ridden ahead, that a large train,
heavily guarded, had left Camden two days ago, sent by Steele to
Pine Bluff for supplies. Determined to intercept the Federals before
they got across the Saline at Amount Elba, he led his troopers on a
[72 ] THE CIVIL WAR3T1864
forced march of forty-five miles to halt at midnight near Marks Mill,
where the road he had taken from Eldorado Landing joined the one
connecting Camden and Pine Bluff, five miles short of the river. He was
pleased to learn that the blue train, delayed by muddy going on cut-up
roads, had made camp at nightfall on the near side of Moro Bottom,
a few miles to the west, and he was also pleased to hear that the prize
was quite as plump as he had hoped: 240 government wagons, together
with a number of other vehicles belonging to "cotton speculators,
refugees, sutlers, and other army followers," escorted by three regiments
of infantry, one of cavalry, and a six-gun battery — in effect, a rein-
forced brigade, whose strength of 1440 effectives was less than half his
own. Anticipating a larger reward than Marmaduke and Maxey had
won at Poison Spring, a week ago tomorrow, Fagan instructed Shelby
to use his Missourians to block the road between Marks Mill and Mount
Elba, thus to prevent an escape across the Saline, and posted his other
brigades near Marks Mill itself, with orders to assail the flank and
rear of the slow-grinding column as soon as it came up next morning.
It came up shortly after dawn and the action went as planned,
except for a more determined resistance by the Iowa, Ohio, and Indi-
ana infantrymen than had been expected. Alarmed by the sudden
attack, they panicked, then rallied and counterattacked. Fagan used his
superior numbers with skill, however, and after about four hours of
hard fighting, some of it hand to hand — especially when Shelby came
back and forced the issue; "I determined to charge them first, last, and
all the time," he later reported — the blue regiments surrendered one
by one, in different quarters of the field. "Less than 150 of the brigade
escaped from the conflict," the Federal commander admitted, "the
balance, including the wounded, being made prisoners." Himself among
them, these totaled 1300, excluding the civilian hangers-on, whose
captured vehicles brought the haul to more than 300 wagons, together
with their teams. All were taken, along with the six guns and the four
regimental standards, and Fagan, whose own loss of more than 300
killed and wounded testified to the savagery of the fighting, rode off
northward, mindful of Kirby Smith's instructions for him to maneuver
in the region between Camden and Little Rock, not only in order
to continue his depredations, but also in order to be in position to
intercept the retreat of Steele, which was expected any day now.
Even so, it came sooner than either side had anticipated before
hearing of Fagan's coup. Informed of the disaster that night by the
handful of fugitives who made it back to Camden from Marks Mill,
Steele called an immediate council of war to ponder what had better
be done to meet this latest crisis. The choice seemed limited to starva-
tion, surrender, or flight. Without exception, his chief subordinates —
Salomon, Thayer, and Brigadier General Eugene Carr, his cavalry
commander — advised the last, and after a day of feverish preparations,
Another Grand Design [ 73 ]
including the destruction of such goods as there was no room for in
the depleted train, issued what scant rations were left to his alerted
troops, which in some cases consisted of two crackers of hardtack and
half a pint of cornmeal, together with a warning that this was likely
to be all they would get until they had covered a considerable portion
of the hundred-mile trek to Little Rock. All day (while Porter was
blowing up the Eastport and Banks was getting resettled in Alexandria,
which the tail of his column had reached that morning) they worked
from dawn to dark to complete their preparations for departure, loading
wagons, rolling packs, destroying unneeded equipment with a minimum
of noise and smoke, lest the rebels in their camps across the way be-
come aware that they were leaving. By way of adding to the deception,
and thereby lengthening the head start, drums beat a noisy tattoo at 8
o'clock, followed an hour later by taps, which was sounded on a far-
carrying bass drum. Meantime the loaded wagons were rolling slowly
across the Ouachita on the pontoon bridge. By midnight all were
over and the infantry followed, breaking step to muffle the hollow sound
of their crossing. In the small hours of April 27, with Camden lying
silent and empty behind them, dark except for a few scattered lamps
left burning to encourage the illusion that the army was still there, the
engineers silently took up the bridge, knowing that it would be needed
when and if they reached the Saline, then hurried after the column,
which had been halted several miles beyond the river to give the troops
some rest for the ordeal that lay ahead.
Back at Camden, the Confederates did not discover until well
after sunrise that they were besieging an empty town. It was midmorning
before they marched in, and even then the infantry could not take
out after the departed garrison until some way was found for them to
cross the bridgeless Ouachita. While Marmaduke's troopers were swim-
ming their mounts across, and Maxey's were preparing for an unex-
pected return to Indian Territory in response to a report of a threatened
invasion from Missouri — Kirby Smith made them a speech of thanks
for their Arkansas service before they set out on their long ride home
— Price began the construction of a "floating bridge," to be used in
ferrying Churchill's and Walker's three divisions over the swollen
river. Building and then using the raft, which had a limited capacity,
was an all-afternoon, all-night affair; it was daylight, April 28, before
the pursuit began in earnest. As a result of the loss of Maxey and the
recent detachment of Fagan, who had done excellent work at Marks
Mill but now was somewhere off to the north and west, unaware that
Camden had been evacuated or that a race to the death was in progress
in his rear, Smith was down to about 10,000 effectives. Although this
amounted to nothing like the preponderance he might have enjoyed,
he pressed them hard in the wake of the fleeing Federals — whose trail
was marked by abandoned equipment, including personal effects,
[74] THE CIVIL WAR»*1864
foundered mules, and wagons buried axle-deep in mud — knowing only
too well that if he did not overtake them before they crossed the Saline
he might as well give up hope of coming to grips with them anywhere
short of Little Rock; which meant, in effect, that he would not be able
to come to grips with them at all, since there they would have the ad-
vantage of intrenchments and could summon reinforcements from
other departments roundabout.
Steele was down to roughly the same number of troops as Smith,
having suffered 2000 casualties in the past month without inflicting half
as many. What was worse, his men had been on short rations all this
time, which tended to make them trembly in the legs and short on
endurance. However, he had not only gained them a full day's head
start in the race for the Arkansas capital, he had also managed to coax
or prod them into making good time on the way there. Shortly after
noon on this second day out of Camden, the head of the column reached
the town of Princeton, in whose streets his rear guard bivouacked that
night, two thirds of the distance to the Saline, which in turn was halfway
to his goal. He had chosen this nearly barren route to Little Rock,
rather than the more accustomed one through Pine Bluff, in order to
avoid the Moro swamps, where the train that fell to Fagan had been
so grievously delayed; but presently, as rain began to patter on the
marchers and the road, he began to doubt that he had chosen wisely. The
mud deepened, slowing the pace of his soldiers as they slogged along
in the ankle-twisting ruts of the wagons up ahead, and the rain came
down harder every hour. Before nightfall, rebel troopers — Marma-
duke's amphibious horsemen — were shooting and slashing at the
bedraggled tail of the column. By that time, though, the van had
reached the Saline at Jenkins Ferry, and the engineers were getting
their pontoons launched and linked and floored, while other details
worked at corduroying the two-mile long approach across the bottoms
giving down upon the river, beyond which there stretched another
just as long and just as mean. Such labor was too heavy for troops in
their condition, faint for sleep as well as food. While they strained at
cutting and placing timbers, Steele's chief engineer afterwards reported,
"wagons settled to the axles and mules floundered about without a
resting place for their feet." After dark, he added, the work continued
by the light of fires, and "every exertion [was] made to push the
impedimenta across before daylight, it being evident that the enemy was
in force in our rear. But we failed. The rain came down in torrents,
putting out many of the fires, the men became exhausted, and both
they and the animals sank down in the mud and mire, wherever they
were, to seek a few hours' repose."
It was here, in this "sea of mud," as the engineer called it, that
fleers and pursuers — blue and gray, though both would be dun before
the thing was over — fought the Battle of Jenkins Ferry, a miry night-
Another Grand Design \ 75 ]
mare of confusion and fatigue. This last applied as much to one side
as the other; for if the Confederates had no foundered mules and ship-
wrecked wagons to haul along or strain at, they had to make a faster
march, with fewer halts, in order to overcome the substantial Union
lead. North of Princeton by nightfall, they took a four-hour rest, then
moved out again at midnight. By 7.30 next morning, April 30, the
lead brigade had come up to where Marmaduke's dismounted troopers
were skirmishing with blue infantry posted astride the road leading
down to the ferry, two miles in its rear. Price committed his troops
as fast as they arrived, first Churchill's own and then its companion
division, led by Brigadier General Mosby Parsons. They made little
headway, for the Federals were crouched behind stout log breastworks,
in a position whose access was restricted on the left and right by Toxie
Creek and an impenetrable swamp. Moreover, this narrow, alley-like
approach not only afforded the charging infantry no cover, it was for
the most part slathered over with a spongy, knee-deep layer of mud
and brim-full pools of standing water. Their only protection was a
blanket of fog, thickened presently by gunsmoke, which lay so heavily
over the field that marksmen had to stoop to take aim under it or else
do their shooting blind. In point of fact, however, this was more of an
advantage for the defenders, who were already lying low, than it was
for the attackers toiling heavy-footed toward them through the mire.
Besides, fog stopped no bullets: as the rebels soon found out, encounter-
ing fire that was no less murderous for being blind. They fell back,
abandoning three guns in the process, and failed to recover them when
Price, after giving the blown attackers time to catch their breath,
ordered the assault renewed.
Kirby Smith was on the field by then, coming up with Walker,
who insisted on remaining with his men despite his unhealed Louisiana
wound, suffered three weeks ago today at Pleasant Hill. Committed
just after Churchill and Parsons were thrown back the second time, his
Texans attacked with such fury and persistence that all three of their
brigade commanders were wounded, two of them mortally. But they
did no better, in the end, than the Arkansans and Missourians had done
before them. The bluecoats were unshaken behind their breastworks,
apparently ready to welcome another attempt to budge them, although
the Confederates were not disposed to try it, having lost no fewer than
1000 casualties in the effort, as compared to about 700 for the de-
fenders, including stragglers who had fallen by the wayside on the
three-day march from Camden. It was past noon; the last Federal
wagon had passed over the river an hour ago, escorted by the cavalry,
and now the infantry followed, unmolested by the former owners of
the three captured guns they took along. Once on the far side of the
Saline, they cut the bridge loose from the south bank and set it afire,
partly because they had no further use for it, having no more rivers
[ 7 6] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
to cross, and partly because their mules were too weary to haul it.
Bridgeless, the rebels could do nothing but let them go, even if they
had been of a mind to stop them; which they no longer were, having
tried.
Fagan came up soon afterward from over near Arkadelphia,
where he had gone for supplies after proceeding north, then west and
south, from the scene of his coup five days ago at Marks Mill, less than
thirty miles downstream from the battle fought today. Though he
made good time on his thirty-four-mile ride from the Ouachita to the
Saline, which began at dawn when he learned that Steele was on the
march for Little Rock by way of Jenkins Ferry, he not only arrived
too late for his 3000 troopers to have a share in the fighting, he was
also on the wrong side of the river for them to undertake pursuit. Kirby
Smith saw in his failure to intercept and impede the Federals one of the
might-have-beens of the war, saying later that if Fagan had "thrown
himself on the enemy's front on his march from Camden, Steele would
have been brought to battle and his command utterly destroyed long
before he reached the Saline." Dismissing this, however, as "one of those
accidents which are likely to befall the best of officers," the even-
tempered Floridian was more inclined to count his gains than to be-
moan lost opportunities. He had, after all, frustrated both Union
attempts to seize his Shreveport base and drive him from his department,
and though Banks at Alexandria was still to be reckoned with as a
menace, the Arkansas column was no longer even the semblance of a
threat, at least for the present, to the region it had set out forty days
ago to conquer. At a cost to himself of about 2000 casualties, a good
portion of whom had already returned to his ranks, Smith had in-
flicted nearly 3000, two thirds of them killed or captured and there-
fore permanent subtractions. Losing three guns he had taken ten, all
told, in a campaign that had cost the invaders 635 wagons surrendered
or destroyed, according to the Federal quartermaster's own report,
along with no less than 2500 mules. The list of captured materiel was
long, including weapons of all types, complete with ammunition, not to
mention sutler goods, rare medical supplies, and enough horses to mount
a brigade of cavalry. But the major gain, as Smith himself declared,
was that he had "succeeded in driving Steele from the valley of the
Ouachita . . . and left myself free to move my entire force to the support
of Taylor."
That was clearly the next order of business. With one prong of
the two-pronged Union offensive — Steele — now definitely snapped
off, it was time to attend to the other — Banks — already severely bent.
After giving the divisions of Churchill, Parsons, and Walker two days
of badly needed rest, Smith issued orders on May 3 for them to return
at once to Camden and proceed from there "by the most direct route
to Louisiana."
Another Grand Design [ 77 ]
Steele's men returned on the same day to Little Rock near
exhaustion, having found the going even more arduous on the north
side of the Saline than on the south. Partly this was because they were
one day hungrier and one battle wearier, but it was also because the
mud was deeper and timber scarce. As a result of this shortage of
corduroy material, they had a much harder time trying to keep the
wagons rolling. When one stuck beyond redemption, as many did, it
was burned to keep it from falling into rebel hands, and when teams
grew too weak to be led, as many did, they were set free: all of which
added greatly to the army's loss of equipment and supplies. From dawn
of A4ay Day to 4 a.m. the next, out of the soggy bottoms at last, the
infantry slogged in a daze that was intensified that night by the lurid
flicker of roadside fires the cavalry had kindled to light their way
through the darkness. "A strange, wild time," one marcher was to term
it, recalling that hardtack sold for two dollars a cracker, while in one
instance two were swapped for a silver watch. Late the second afternoon
a shout went up from the head of the column, announcing that a
train had come out from the capital with provisions. They made camp
for the night, wolfing their rations before turning in, and were off
again at sunrise. When the fortifications of Little Rock came into sight,
around midmorning of May 3, they halted to dress their tattered
ranks and thus present as decent an appearance as they could manage,
then proceeded into town, giving a prominent place in the column to the
three captured guns that were all they had to show, in the way of
trophies, for their forty-two days of campaigning.
"The Camden Expedition," Steele called the unhappy affair, as if
Shreveport had never been part of his calculations. But the men them-
selves, being rather in agreement with the Saint Louis journalist that all
they had gained for their pains was "defeat, hard blows, and poor fare,"
were not deceived. They had failed to reach their assigned objective,
whatever their silky-whiskered commander might claim to the contrary,
and they knew only too well what the failure had cost them: not to
mention what it might cost Banks, who seemed likely to lose a great
deal more, now that Steele had left the rebels free to shift their full
attention to matters in Louisiana.
All would now depend on speed in that direction: speed for the
three divisions on the way to Taylor, speed for him in bringing them
to bear, and speed for Banks and Porter in solving, before that hap-
pened, the problem of how to get ten gunboats, some of which drew
seven feet of water, down and past a mile-long stretch of river less than
half that deep. It was in that sense a race, with the odds very much in
favor of the Confederates. So far at least as the concentration went,
they had only to do in Louisiana what they had just finished doing in
[78] THE CIVIL WAR»*1864
Arkansas; whereas the Federals were confronted with a problem that
seemed, on the face of it, insoluble. Yet by now, before they even knew
that Steele had backtracked and a race was therefore on, the blue
commanders had found a way to win it. Or in any case they had found
a man who believed he knew a way to win it, if they would only let
him try.
On April 29 — while Marmaduke was closing on Steele near
Jenkins Ferry and opening the action that would swell to battle pro-
portions tomorrow morning — Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Bailey,
Franklin's chief of engineers, came to Banks with a plan for raising the
level of the river by installing, above Alexandria, a system of wing
darns that would constrict and thereby deepen the channel leading
down to and over the falls. A former Northwest lumberman, thirty-
nine years old this week, he had used such methods to get logs down
sluggish Wisconsin streams, and he was convinced they would work
here, too, on a larger scale and for a larger purpose. "I wish I was as
sure of heaven as I am that I can save the fleet," he said. Banks needed
little persuading, not only because he was desperate enough by now to
try almost anything, but also because the young engineer had demon-
strated his ability along those lines the previous summer at Port Hud-
son, where he had salvaged, by damming a shallow creek to float them
free, a pair of transports the rebels had left lying on their sides in the
mud. The general took him that evening to present his plan to Porter.
Contemplating the loss of his gunboats and the wreck of his career, the
admiral was in an unaccustomed state of dejection; "This fatal cam-
paign has upset everything," he had recently complained to Wells
in a dispatch designed to prepare the Secretary for darker ones to
follow. His first reaction to Bailey's proposal was to scoff at it. "If
damning would get the fleet off, we would have been afloat long ago,"
he broke in, brightening a bit at this evidence that his sense of humor,
such as it was, was still in working order. When it was explained to
him further that the navy would have little to do but stand by and
watch the army sweat and strain, he declared that he was willing on
those terms. Accordingly, Banks issued orders on the last day of April
for the thing to be tried, and Bailey, given 3000 soldiers to use as he
saw fit in getting it done, put them to work without delay on May
Day morning.
His plan was to construct above the lower falls, where the Red
was 758 feet wide, a pair of wing dams, each extending about three
hundred feet out into the river, then sink high-sided barges filled
with brick across the remaining gap. The north bank darn was to be
formed of large trees laid with the current, their branches interlocked
and their trunks cross-tied with heavy timbers on the downstream side;
while the one on the south bank, where trees were scarce, would con-
sist of huge cribs, pushed out and sunk and anchored in place with
Another Grand Design [ 79 ]
rubble of all kinds. Most of the left-bank work was done by a Maine
regiment of highly skilled axmen and loggers, the rest being left to three
regiments of New Yorkers, experienced in tearing down old buildings
— one was the military academy of which Sherman had been superin-
tendent just before the war — for bricks and stone, to be used to hold
the sunken cribs and barges in position against the force of the nine-
knot current. They worked day and night, under a broiling sun and
by the light of bonfires, much of the time up to their necks in the
swift, rust-colored water.
At the outset they provoked more jeers than cheers from the
sailors and off-duty soldiers looking on, but as the ends of the two
dams drew closer together, day by day and hour by hour, interest
mounted and skepticism lessened among the spectators on the gun-
boats and both banks, who now began to tell each other that Bailey's
notion might just be practicable, after all. The sailors, especially those
aboard the "teakettles," as the ironclads were called, were pleased to be
afforded this diversion, now that rising temperatures had added physical
discomfort to their boredom. "During the day," an officer recorded,
"the iron on the decks would get so hot that the hand could barely
rest upon it. At night, sleep was impossible. The decks were kept
wetted down, and the men lay on them, getting, toward the morning
hours when the hulls had cooled down, such sleep as could be
secured." Nor were excursions ashore of much help in this regard, in-
volving, as they sometimes did, another form of torture which southern
women, then and later, were adept at inflicting. "Saw quite a number
of ladies from Pine Village opposite Alexandria," a sailor wrote in his
diary after one such visit. "Two in particular were out on display
promenade, one of whom had a beautiful black squirrel which ran all
over her, up her dress sleeves and under her lace cape into her bosom,
with a familiarity that made me envy the little favorite and sent a
thrill that did not feel very bad through all the little veins in my body."
Still, being bored or titillated, painful though they were in their
different ways, was better than getting shot at: as a good many soldiers
and sailors could testify from experience while the dams were being
built. If Taylor lacked the strength to interfere with the work going on
behind the Federal intrenchments, he could at least make life hectic
for the troops who manned them, and he could do considerably worse
to those who ventured outside them, on foot or afloat. On the day
Bailey started construction, the transport Emma was captured at David's
Ferry, thirty miles below Alexandria, her captain and crew looking on
as prisoners while the rebels burned her. Three days later another, the
City Belle, was served in much the same fashion a few miles farther
down, this time with a 700-man Ohio regiment aboard. More than a
third of the soldiers were captured — 276 by Taylor's count — while
the rest went over the side, escaped ashore, and eventually made their
[8o] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
way back through the lines. Next day, May 5, saw the gravest loss of
all. The transport Warner, escorted by the gunboats Covington and
Signal while taking another regiment of Ohioans downriver to begin
their reenlistment furloughs, came under fire from a masked battery as
she rounded a bend near the mouth of Dunn's Bayou. Disabled by an
unlucky shot in her rudder, she spun with the current, absorbing heavy
punishment from riflemen posted along the high south bank, and when
the two warships tried to come to her assistance by bringing their
seventeen guns to bear on the rebel four, they were given the same
treatment in short order. Covington, hulled repeatedly, went aground
and was set afire by her skipper, who got away into the woods with 3 2
of his crew of 74, leaving the rest to the mercy of the gray marksmen
who by then were at work on Signal. They cut her up so badly that
the captain, prevented from destroying her by the fact that there was
no time for removing the wounded, struck his colors and surrendered
his 54 survivors, together with some 125 killed and wounded left strewn
about the decks of the Warner when she and they were abandoned by
her crew and their fellow soldiers. That brought the total for the past
five days to better than 600 amphibious Federals killed or captured, to-
gether with three transports and two gunboats, at a cost to the Con-
federates of little more than the ammunition they expended. Worst of
all, from the point of view of the soldiers and sailors cooped up in Alex-
andria or marooned above the falls, the Red was emphatically closed to
Union shipping. They had to subsist on what they had, which by now
was very little, or starve; or leave.
Along with everyone else in blue, Banks preferred the last of
these three alternatives, although it appeared about as unlikely as the
first. At this stage, the choice seemed narrowed to the second — starva-
tion — which was scarcely a choice at all. As of May Day, he computed
that he could subsist his army for three weeks on half-rations out of what
he had on hand. That might or might not be enough, depending on
whether the work begun on the dams that day could be completed
within that span, but there seemed little doubt, at best, that he would
lose his train for lack of animals to haul the wagons. Forage was so short
already that Taylor was complaining, and exulting, that the horses he
captured were little more than skeletons. Pitiable as they were, he in-
tended to be still harder on them in the immediate future, as a means of
being harder on the men who rode or drove them. On May 7, after
claiming that his downstream successes near Dunn's Bayou had con-
verted the lower Red, formerly a broad Federal highway of invasion,
into "a mare claiisnm," he reported to Kirby Smith: "Forage and sub-
sistence of every kind have been removed beyond the enemy's reach.
Rigid orders are given to destroy everything useful that can fall into
his hands. We will play the game the Russians played in the retreat from
A4oscow."
Another Grand Design [ 81 ]
So he intended, gazing all the while back over his shoulder for
some sign of the approach of the troops from Arkansas, without whom
he lacked the strength to come to earnest grips with the beleaguered
Unionists. All he could do was pray that they would arrive before the
bluecoats started the downstream march that would increase the distance
his reinforcements would have to cover before they could be brought
to bear.
In point of fact, the race was closer than he knew. Faith had re-
placed skepticism in the attitude of the watchers at the dam site. "Before
God, what won't the Yankees do next!" a gray-haired contraband cried
in amazement at his first sight of the week-old work in progress, now
rapidly nearing completion. Crews of the largest of the ten warships
above the falls, having caught the spirit of the workers in the water, were
busy lightening their vessels by stripping off side armor, which they
dumped in a five-fathom hole upstream to keep it out of rebel hands, and
unloading such heavy materials as commandeered cotton, anchors, chains,
ammunition, and most of the guns, which — all but eleven old 32-
pounders, spiked and sunk, like the iron plating, to forestall salvage —
were to be carted below on wagons for reloading in deep water beyond
the falls. By the following day, May 8, the river had risen enough to
allow three of the lighter-draft boats, the tinclad Fort Hindman and the
broad-bottomed monitors Osage and Neosho, to pass the upper falls and
take station just above the dam, awaiting the further rise that would en-
able them to make their run. That would not take long, apparently, for
now that the dam was finished and the rubble-laden barges sunk to plug
the gap between the wings, the river was rising so swiftly that it deep-
ened more than a foot between sunset and midnight, increasing the
midstream depth to a full six feet. Another foot would do it, the engi-
neers said. As the depth increased, however, so did the speed of the
current and the resultant pressure on the dam, which mounted in ratio
to both. Banks, for one, began to fear that the whole affair would be
swept away in short order. Arriving for an inspection by the light of
bonfires late that night, he sent Porter a message expressing hope that
the flotilla would be ready to move down at a moment's notice, since
it seemed to him unlikely that the dam, already trembling under the
weight of all that water, could survive past dawn.
He was wrong by about one hour. It held all night, then blew at
5.30 next morning when two of the barges shifted, first tentatively, then
with a rush, and went with' the boom and froth of current through the
re-created gap.
Porter was on the scene. He had paid Banks's warning no mind last
evening, but now that its validity was being demonstrated so cata-
clysmically, he reacted in a hurry by leaping astride a horse for a fast ride
upstream to order the boats above the upper falls to start their run before
the water, rushing Niagara-like between the unplugged wings of the
[82] THE CIVIL WAR3T1864
dam, fell too low for them to try it. All but Lexington, the oldest vessel
with the fleet — one of the three original "timberclads," she was a
veteran of practically all the river fights since Belmont, where Grant
got his start, and had harassed the Confederates trying to get some sleep
in the captured Federal camps after the first day's fight at Shiloh — were
unready for action of any kind, moored to bank with their steam down
and all but their anchor watches taking it easy about the decks. Lexing-
ton got under way at once, passing scantly over the rocks of the upper
falls, and headed straight for the 66-foot opening between the two
remaining barges. The admiral, one of the thousands of soldiers and
sailors who lined both banks of the Red to watch her go, later reported
her progress and the reaction, afloat and ashore: "She entered the gap
with a full head of steam on, pitched down the roaring current, made
two or three spasmodic rolls, hung for a moment on the rocks below,
and then was swept into deep water by the current and rounded to,
safely into the bank. Thirty thousand voices rose in one deafening cheer,
and universal joy seemed to pervade the face of every man present."
Encouraged by Lexington's example, the skippers of the three
boats that had crossed the upper falls the previous day decided to try
their hand at completing the run before the mass of water drained away
and left them stranded in the shallows of the rapids. Neosho led off, ad-
vancing bravely under a full head of steam. At the last minute, however,
just as she was about to enter the gorge, the pilot lost his nerve and
signaled for the engine to be stopped. It was, but not the monitor her-
self. She went with the sucking rush of the current, out of control; her
low hull plunged from sight beneath the spume as she went into the gap,
careening through at an angle so steep it was nearly a dive, and struck
bottom with an iron clang, loud against the bated silence on both banks;
then reappeared at last below, taking cheers from the watchers and
water through the hole the stones had punched along her keel. This last
was slight and soon repaired — a small price to pay for deliverance from
a month's captivity, not to mention the risk of self-destruction or sur-
render. The other two warships, Osage and Hindman, made it through
in a more conservative style, with less excitement for the troops on shore
but also with less damage to themselves. Four boats were now below
the double falls, assured of freedom and continuing careers in their
old allegiance. But the remaining six were trapped as completely as
before, the water having fallen too low for them to cross the upper falls
by the time they got up steam enough to risk the run.
Banks was more or less unstrung by the fulfillment of his predic-
tion that the dam was about to go. He foresaw indefinite postponement
of the departure which just last night had seemed so near, and he was
correspondingly cast down, having seen the effects of starvation only
too clearly last summer at Port Hudson when the scarecrow garrison
lined up for surrender. "We have exhausted the country," he told Porter
Another Grand Design [ 83 ]
that afternoon, "and with the march that is before us it will be perilous
to remain more than another day."
The admiral, perhaps because he had put less faith in the dam as a
means of deliverance, reacted less despairingly to the mishap. After all,
he had saved four of his boats already — four less than he had feared
he well might lose — and he believed he could save the other half
dozen as well, if the army would only stand fast until the dam could be
replugged. But there was the rub. Banks, in his depression, was giving
what seemed to Porter signs that he was about to pull out, bag and
baggage, workers and all, and leave the stranded warships to the mercy
of butternut marksmen who had demonstrated at Dunn's Bayou, four
days ago, their skill at naval demolition when there was no army stand-
ing by to hold them off. On May n, when Banks displayed further
jumpiness by sending a staff officer to complain that the navy seemed
unmindful of the need for utmost haste, Porter did what he could to
calm him down. "Now, General," he replied soothingly, "I really see
nothing that should make us despond. You have a fine army, and I shall
have a strong fleet of gunboats to drive away an inferior force in our
front." Up to now, he artfully pointed out, the press had been highly
critical of the conduct of the campaign; but think what a glorious finish
the salvation of the flotilla would afford the journalists for the stories
yet to be filed. And having thus appealed to the former governor's
political sensibilities, the admiral closed with an exhortation designed to
stiffen his resolution. "I hope, Sir, you will not let anything divert you
from the attempt to get these vessels all through safely, even if we have
to stay here and eat mule meat."
No blue-clad soldier or sailor had yet been reduced to such a diet;
nor would one be here, though Banks was quick to reply that he had no
intention of leaving the navy in the lurch. The reason again was Bailey,
who once more solved a difficult engineering problem in short order.
Instead of attempting to plug the swift-running gap between the still-
intact wings of the dam just above the lower falls, he decided instead
to construct another at the upper falls, similar to the first, and thus not try
any longer to sustain the weight of all that water with one dam. It was
done with such dispatch, his thousand-man detail being thoroughly ex-
perienced in such work by now, that within three days — that is, before
sunset of the day Porter urged Banks to stand by him "even if we have
to stay here and eat mule meat" — three more vessels completed their
runs down the mile-long rapids and over the two sets of falls. These were
the veteran Eads gunboats Mound City, Pittsburg, and Carondolet. Next
day, May 12, the remaining three — the armored steamer Chillicothe, the
fourth Eads gunboat Louisville, and finally the third monitor Ozark,
successor to the Eastport as the pride of the river fleet — did the same.
The admiral and his precious warships were delivered, thanks to Bailey,
to whom he presented, as a personal gift, a $700 sword. The engineer
[84] THE CIVIL WAR3T1864
also received, as tokens of appreciation, a $1600 silver vase from the
navy, a vote of thanks from Congress, and in time a two-step promotion
to brigadier general. None of this was a whit too much, according to
Porter, who said of the former Wisconsin logger in his report: "Words
are inadequate to express the admiration I feel for the abilities of Lieu-
tenant Colonel Bailey. This is without doubt the best engineering
feat ever performed. Under the best circumstances a private com-
pany would not have completed this work under one year, and to an
ordinary mind the whole thing would have appeared an utter impos-
sibility."
He might have added that his own mind seemed to fit in that
category, since he had prejudged the attempt in just that way. But for
the present, steaming down the lower Red, where the going was deep
and easy because of backwater from the swollen Mississippi, he was
altogether occupied with savoring his freedom, his narrow delivery from
ruin. "I am clear of my troubles," he wrote home to his mother that
week, though he was not so far clear of them that he forgot to add: "I
have had a hard and anxious time of it."
So had Banks had a hard and anxious time of it, and so was he still,
along with the slogging troops under his command. Leaving Alexandria
on May 13, the day after Porter completed his run, they had another
sixty hostile miles to cover before they would return to their starting
point, Simsport on the Atchafalaya, where Sherman's men had opened
the campaign, just one day more than two full months ago. In point of
fact, except as a location on the map, the town no longer existed; A. J.
Smith's gorillas had burned it at the outset. And now, looking back over
their shoulders as they set out, they had a similar satisfaction — similar
not only to Simsport, but also to Grand Ecore, three weeks ago, as well
as to a number of lesser hamlets in their path, before and since — of
seeing Alexandria aflame. It burned briskly under a long, wind-tattered
plume of greasy smoke, while over the levee and down by the bank of
the river, as one Federal would recall, "thousands of people, mostly
women, children, and old men, were wringing their hands as they stood
by the little piles of what was left of all their worldly possessions." They
had been driven there by the sudden press of heat from a score of fires
that quickly merged after starting simultaneously with the help of a
mixture of turpentine and camphene, which the soldiers slopped on
houses and stores with mops and brooms. Experience had greatly im-
proved their incendiary technique. "Hurrah, boys! This looks like war!"
Smith shouted by way of encouragement as he rode through the streets,
rounding up his men for departure.
They had their usual assignment as rear guard, the post of honor
on retreat, while the Easterners took the lead. Banks rode with the more
congenial troops up front, commanded now by Emory; Franklin, after
Another Grand Design [ 85 ]
recommending that his chief engineer's proposal for saving the fleet be
tried, had left on May Day, still fretted by his shin wound, which seemed
to require more skilled attention than the Transmississippi doctors were
able to furnish, and by disgust and bitterness at having been prominently
connected with still another large-scale defeat. Banks of course had that
fret too, without the red-badge distraction of a physical injury, but he
felt better, all in all, than he had done at any time in the past horrendous
month. For one thing, the salvation of the flotilla had given journalists
the upbeat ending Porter had dangled as bait for prolonging the army's
stay in Alexandria, and for another his casualties had been replaced,
before the end of April, by reinforcements who arrived from Pass
Cavallo, Texas, under Major General John A. McClernand, resurrected
from his Grant-enforced retirement in Springfield, Illinois, and put in
command of the lower Texas coast by his old friend and fellow towns-
man Abraham Lincoln. That brought the army's total strength to 3 1,000
effectives up the Red, more than Banks had had directly under him so
far in the campaign. Even though there was no compensation for the
loss of twenty guns, two hundred wagons, and something over a
thousand mules, this added strength brought added confidence; which,
aside from military skill, had been the thing most lacking at head-
quarters since the crossroads confrontation short of Mansfield, five weeks
ago today. Moreover, there was the relief of having the end at last in
sight, whatever disappointments had occurred along the way, and of
discovering that Taylor, for all his bluster in the course of the Alexandria
siege, seemed considerably less a menace now that the cooped-up blue-
coats were out in the open, inviting the attack he formerly had seemed
anxious but now seemed strangely reluctant to deliver.
At any rate that appeared to be the case throughout the first
three days of the march downriver. Crossing the Choctaw Bayou swamps
on the second day out of smouldering Alexandria, the Federals occupied
Marksville on the evening of the third. That was May 15; they had
covered forty miles by then, molested by nothing worse than grayback
cavalry, which failed in its attempts to get at the wagons drawn by
scarecrow mules, and were a good two thirds of their way to the
sanctuary a crossing of the Atchafalaya would afford them. Banks tem-
pered his optimism, however, by reminding himself that the tactical
situation resembled the one that had obtained, or had seemed to obtain,
on the march from Natchitoches to within three miles of Mansfield,
where it ended in disarray. The resemblance was altogether too close for
comfort, let alone for premature self-congratulation; Taylor might well
be planning a repeat of that performance at another crossroads, some-
where up ahead. And sure enough, advancing next morning across the
Avoyelles Prairie, five miles south of Marksville, Banks found the Con-
federates disposed in force athwart his path, much as they had been at
Sabine Crossroads, except that here the terrain was open and gave him a
[86] THE CIVIL WAR ^ 1864
sobering view of what he faced. Their line of battle extending east and
west of the village of Mansura, they had thirty-odd pieces of artillery —
more than half of them had been his own, up to the time of the previous
confrontation just short of Mansfield, which this one so uncomfortably
resembled — unlimbered and ready to take him under fire as soon as he
ventured within range. Their numbers in infantry and cavalry were
hard to estimate, masked as their center was by the town, but Banks did
not decline the challenge. He shook out his skirmishers, put his own
guns in position — as many of the remaining seventy, in any case, as he
could find room for on the three-mile width of prairie — formed his in-
fantry for attack with cavalry posted neatly on both flanks, and then
went forward, blue flags rippling in the breeze.
The result, as the troops began to move and the guns to growl,
was enough to make observers in both armies, each of which had a full
view of the other, catch their breath in admiration. Advancing across
the lush and level prairie — "smooth as a billiard table," Taylor was to
say of it in his report — the Union host was "resplendent in steel and
brass," according to one of its members, a Connecticut infantryman who
afterward tried his hand at a word sketch of the scene, including "miles
of lines and columns; the cavalry gliding over the ground in the distance
with a delicate, nimble lightness of innumerable twinkling feet; a few
batteries enveloped in smoke and incessantly thundering, others dash-
ing swiftly to salient positions; division and corps commanders with
their staff officers clustering about them, watching through their
glasses the hostile army; couriers riding swiftly from wing to wing;
everywhere the beautiful silken flags; and the scene ever changing with
the involutions and evolutions of the vast host." It was, in short, that
seldom-encountered thing, picture-book war — which it also resembled,
as events developed, in its paucity of bloodshed. Though the armies
remained in approximate confrontation for four hours, the action was
practically limited to artillery exchanges, since neither commander
seemed willing to venture within point-blank range of the other's
guns. When at last Banks brought A. J. Smith's Westerners forward for
an attack on the rebel left, Taylor withdrew in that direction, south and
west, and the Federals resumed their march to the south and east,
through Mansura, then on to Bayou de Glaise, on whose banks they
stopped for the night. Next day, May 17, after skirmishing warmly
with enemy horsemen on both sides of Moreauville, they pushed on to
Yellow Bayou, within five miles of Simsport and the Atchafalaya, which
would shield them from further pursuit once tney were across it.
If Banks had known the extent of the odds in his favor, he not
only would have been less surprised at the sidelong rebel withdrawal
from Mansura, he would also have been considerably less concerned
for the safety of his army, which in fact enjoyed a five-to-one numerical
advantage over the force attempting to waylay and impede it. Taylor
Another Grand Design [ 87 ]
fairly ached for some sign of the three divisions on the march from
Arkansas; to no avail. "Like 'Sister Ann' from her watch tower," he
was to write, "day after day we strained our eyes to see the dust of
our approaching comrades. . . . Vain, indeed, were our hopes. The
commander of the 'Trans-Mississippi Department' had the power to
destroy the last hope of the Confederate cause, and exercised it with
all the success of Bazaine at Metz. 'The affairs of mice and men aft
gang aglee,' from sheer stupidity and pig-headed obstinacy." And lest
his meaning be clouded by his fondness for religious and historical allu-
sions and poetic misquotations, he made the charge specific and identi-
fied by name the man he held responsible for his woes: "From first to
last, General Kirby Smith seemed determined to throw a protecting
shield around the Federal army and fleet."
This bitterness would grow; would in time become obsessive. But
for the present the Louisiana general directed most of his attention to a
search for some way, despite the odds, to inflict more vengeful damage
on the spoilers of his homeland before they fled beyond his reach. The
side-step at Mansura, allowing them to press on south and east, had
been as necessary as it was painful; for if Taylor was to preserve his
little army for future use, he could not afford to take on the blue host
without a tactical advantage totally lacking on the open prairie. Then
next day he received, as if from Providence, what he believed might
be the chance for which he prayed. Pushing on through Moreauville,
the Federal main body reached Yellow Bayou only to learn from its
scouts, who had ridden ahead, that backwater from the Mississippi had
swollen the Atchafalaya to a width too great for spanning by all the
pontoons the engineers had on hand. Without a bridge, the crossing
would be at best a slow affair, involving the use of transports as ferries.
Penned up with its back to the river, as it had been at Grand Ecore
and Alexandria, the blue mass would grow more vulnerable as it shrank,
regiment by regiment, until at last a gray assault could be launched
against the remnant — perhaps with the help, by then, of the slow-
moving troops from Arkansas — extracting payment in blood for the
vandalism of the past nine weeks. Taylor brightened at the prospect,
and next morning, May 18, moved his infantry up to join his cavalry on
Yellow Bayou, intending to advance from there and establish a semi-
circular, close-up line of intrenchments from which to observe the
dwindling Union army, held under siege amid the ashes of what had
once been Simsport.
Looking out across the unbridgeable 600-yard expanse of the
Atchafalaya, a swollen barrier to the safety his army could only attain
by reaching the far side, Banks foresaw an outcome all too similar to
the one his adversary was moving to effect. Still his despair was not so
deep as to keep him from doing all he could to ward it off. When he
was informed, around midmorning, that Taylor had moved up to
[88] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
Yellow Bayou, close in his rear, he instructed A. J. Smith to counter-
march and drive him back. Smith returned to the Bayou, crossed three
brigades, and pitched without delay into the rebel skirmish line, throw-
ing it back on the main body, which then attacked and drove him back
in turn. It went that way for a couple of hours, first one side gaining
ground and then the other — each had about 5000 men engaged —
until at last the underbrush caught fire and both withdrew in opposite
directions, choked and scorched, from the crackling barricade of smoke
and flame. That ended the action. Unresolved and indecisive as it was,
Smith's gorillas once more had proved their worth as fighters as well
as burners, losing about 350 to inflict a total of 608 casualties on Taylor.
Nothing daunted, the Louisianian prepared to return to the
offensive next day, May 19. But that was not to be. The back-and-forth
engagement on the west side of Yellow Bayou turned out to be the
last of the campaign — for the simple reason that presently no blue-
clad troops remained within his reach. Banks by then had bridged the
unbridgeable Atchafalaya.
Once more the dens ex machina was Joe Bailey. Handed the
problem by Banks, the engineering colonel promptly solved it by moor-
ing all the available riverboats and transports side by side across the
near-half-mile width of the stream, like oversized pontoons, and bolting
them together with timbers which then served as stringers for planks
laid crosswise on them to form a roadbed. Soon after midday, though
the varying heights of the boats on which it rested gave it something of
the crazy, up-and-down aspect of a roller coaster, Banks had the bridge
he needed to reach the sanctuary beyond the river. The wagon train
began to cross at once, followed that night by the guns and ambulances;
next morning, May 20, the troops themselves were marched across and
the makeshift bridge dismantled in their rear. Two days later — a solid
month past the time when they had been scheduled to rejoin Sherman
in far-off Georgia — Smith's three divisions filed back aboard their
transports and set out for Vicksburg. Banks meantime was as full of
praise for Bailey, here on the Atchafalaya, as Porter had been the week
before, back up the Red. "This work was not of the same magnitude,
but was as important to the army as the dam at Alexandria was to the
navy," he said of the improvised bridge in his final report, and repeated
his recommendation that the former logger be promoted to brigadier
as a reward for his resourcefulness under pressure.
Another upbeat flourish had been provided, but so had additions
been made to the list of casualties — more than fifteen hundred of them,
all told, since the return to Alexandria in late April. Army losses for
the campaign now stood at 5245 killed, wounded, and missing, and to
this were added some three hundred naval casualties, suffered in the
course of the subtraction from the flotilla of an ironclad, two tinclads,
three transports, a pair of pump boats, and 28 guns of various calibers,
Another Grand Design [ 89 ]
captured or spiked and abandoned up the Red. This Federal total of
about 5500 exceeded by well over a thousand the Confederate total
of 4275. Losses in materiel were of course even more disproportionate,
not only because the rebels had lost much less in battle, but also because
they had had a great deal less to lose: aside, that is, from civilian
property, the destruction of which, if included, would doubtless swing
the balance the other way. But perhaps the greatest contrast lay in
what a member of Banks's official family called "the great and bitter
crop of quarrels" raised in the northern ranks by what he referred to
as "this unhappy campaign." If on the Confederate side there were
arguments in the scramble to divide the glory, on the Union side there
were hotter ones involved in the distribution of the blame. Looking
back over the events of the past seventy days, the staffer noted that
feelings had been severely ruffled and several lofty reputations quite
undone. "Franklin quitted the department in disgust," he recalled;
"Stone was replaced by Dwight as chief of staff, and Lee as chief of
cavalry by Arnold; A. J. Smith departed more in anger than in sorrow;
while between the admiral and the general commanding, recriminations
were exchanged in language well up to the limits of 'parliamentary'
privilege."
Now still another illustrious name was added to the list: Banks's
own. Not that he was relieved outright or shunted into obscurity, as so
many others had been in the doleful course of the past six weeks. This
was an election year, and too much rode on the outcome for the authori-
ties to risk alienating a man with as many votes as the one-time Speaker
of the House controlled. Lincoln and Halleck put their heads together
and came up with the answer. Major General Edward R. S. Canby, a
forty-six-year-old Kentucky-born West Pointer, had come east after
the New Mexico campaign of 1862, in which he had managed to save
the Far West for the Union, and had since been involved in administra-
tive matters, including the reestablishment of law and order in New
York after the draft riots of 1863. In all these positions his outstanding
characteristic had been his prudence, a rare quality nowadays in the
Transmississippi; Lincoln and Halleck, with Grant's concurrence —
Canby had been another of his classmates at the Point — decided to
send him there to supply it, not as Banks's replacement, but rather as
his superior, by placing him in charge of the newly created "Military
Division of West Mississippi," which stretched from Missouri to the
Gulf and from Florida to Texas. Banks's unquestioned abilities as an
administrator, honest amid corruption, were thus preserved for the
government's use, along with his political support, while his military in-
eptness was set aside by depriving him of any further independence —
or, as it turned out, service — in the field.
Canby was waiting for him with the necessary papers at Simsport,
and accompanied him on the final leg of the retreat, another hundred
[ 9o ] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
miles downriver to Donaldsonville, where the campaign formally ended
on May 26, seventy-five days after its start and more than a month be-
yond its scheduled finish. An Iowa soldier wrote in his diary that Banks
looked "dejected and worn" at that stage, and small wonder. More had
ended and more had been lost, for him, than the campaign. The former
governor, whose reduction of Port Hudson had opened the Mississippi
to northern trade throughout its length, was now the mere desk-bound
head of a subdepartment in an organization commanded by a man al-
most two years his junior in age and three full years behind him in date
of rank. That came hard, but that was by no means the worst of it for
Banks, who was taunted not only by the thought of what he had lost
but also by the thought of what he had failed to gain. Mobile might
someday be attacked and taken, but not by him, and along with much
else that had gone with the winds of war — including all those hundreds
of thousands of bales of cotton, which were to have put the national
effort on a pay-as-you-go basis, but which instead had tainted it with
scandal — were his hopes for the highest political office. All that had
ended up the Red. He not only had been defeated by his enemies up that
river, he had been oversloughed by his superiors on his return: "a fit
sequel," the Saint Louis Republican asserted, "to a scheme conceived
in politics and brought forth in iniquity."
If contention was less widespread on the Confederate side, where
there was more credit than blame to be divided, such contention as there
was only flared the higher on that account. Taylor's distress in reaction
to his fear that the Federals were going to escape — the result, he
claimed, of "sheer stupidity and pig-headed obstinacy" on the part of
the high command at Shreveport — was mild compared to the frustra-
tion he felt when the bluecoats did in fact improvise an Atchafalaya
crossing before the arrival of the Arkansas reinforcements enabled him
to exact the retribution he felt they owed. Though his pride in his out-
numbered army was as boundless as his contempt for the invaders
("Long will the accursed race remember the great river of Texas and
Louisiana," he said of the latter in a congratulatory order he issued to
his troops on May 23. "The characteristic hue of its turbid waters has a
darker tinge from the liberal admixture of Yankee blood. The cruel
alligator and the ravenous garfish wax fat on rich food, and our native
vulture holds high revelry over many a festering corpse") his wrath had
mounted with each passing day of the unimpeded blue retreat. Moving
up to Yellow Bayou five days ago, he had taken time to communicate
his chagrin at having been obliged to step aside, just when he had the
vandals within his grasp, for lack of strength to stand his ground at
Mansura. "I feel bitterly about this," he protested in a dispatch to Kirby
Smith's adjutant, "because my army has been robbed of the just measure
of its glory and the country of the most brilliant and complete success
of the war."
Another Grand Design [ 91 ]
The further it receded into the past, the more "brilliant and com-
plete" that missed victory became. Indeed, within a week or so, Taylor
had come to believe that his superior's military ineptness, which had
obliged him to forgo a certain triumph, might well have cost the South
its one best chance to win its independence. What was more, he said
as much to Kirby Smith himself on June 5, in a letter combining in-
dignation and despair. "In truth," he wrote, quite as if he had a corner
on that rare commodity, "the campaign as a whole has been a hideous
failure. The fruits of Mansfield have turned to dust and ashes. Louisiana,
from Natchitoches to the Gulf, is a howling wilderness and her people
are starving. Arkansas is probably as great a sufferer. In both States
abolition conventions are sitting to overthrow their system of labor.
The remains of Banks' army have already gone to join Grant or Sherman,
and may turn the scale against our overmatched brethren in Virginia
and Georgia." What made the hot-tempered Louisianian angriest was
the contrast between this and the situation that might have obtained if
his chief had not rejected his advice on how to go about disposing of the
invaders, which he was certain would have led to their destruction and
the reversal of the tide of war. "The roads to Saint Louis and New
Orleans should now be open to us. Your strategy has riveted the fetters
on both." The more he wrote — and he wrote at length, including a full
critique of the campaign, with emphasis on the mismanagement of events
beyond his reach, both here and in Arkansas — the angrier he grew:
until finally, as he drew to a close, his wrath approached incandescence.
"The same regard for duty which led me to throw myself between you
and popular indignation, and quietly take the blame for your errors,"
he wound up, "compels me to tell you the truth, however objectionable
to you. The grave errors you have committed in the recent campaign
may be repeated if the unhappy consequences are not kept before you.
After the desire to serve my country, I have none more ardent than to
be relieved from longer serving under your command."
Thus Taylor, whose rage had made him as blind to the virtues
of others as he was perceptive of their faults. To refer to the just-ended
campaign as "a hideous failure," simply because it had not yielded
all that he had hoped for, was to overlook its fruits, which in fact were
far from slight. Inflicting more than 8000 casualties on Steele and
Banks, at a cost to Price and Taylor of 6500, Smith had captured or
caused the destruction of 57 pieces of artillery, nearly half of them
naval, along with about a thousand wagons, most of them loaded with
valuable supplies, and more than 3500 mules and horses. This was a
considerable tactical haul, by almost any standards, and yet the strate-
gic gains were even greater. Despite the hot-tempered Louisianian's
claim to the contrary, the campaign had cost Sherman the use of 10,000
veterans in North Georgia; which meant that he moved with that
many fewer against Joe Johnston, while Johnston's own army was en-
9 2
THE CIVIL WAR
1864
larged by nearly twice that number because the upset of Banks' schedule
had ruled out an early movement against Mobile, leaving Polk free to
shift from Demopolis toward Dalton with some 20,000 troops who
otherwise would have been drawn in the opposite direction by the threat
to coastal Alabama. The greatest effect of the campaign up Red River
thus was felt in northern Georgia, where a net difference of 30,000 men
was registered in favor of the defenders of Atlanta. If the South was
going to lose the war, then this would no doubt prolong the conflict.
On the other hand, this might just narrow the long odds enough for
the South to win it.
That of course remained to be seen. In the meantime, there was
nothing Kirby Smith could do, despite his disinclination in such matters,
but act on Taylor's insubordinate letter. Appointing Walker as his
successor, he ordered him to Natchitoches, there to await instructions
from their superiors, and forwarded the correspondence to Richmond
with a covering letter to his friend the President. The good of the
service required that he or Taylor be removed from command, the mild-
mannered Floridian declared, adding that if Davis thought it best —
as he well might do; Smith freely acknowledged the Louisianian's
"merits as a soldier" — "I will willingly, with no feeling of envy or
abatement of interest in the service of my country, turn over my arduous
duties and responsibilities to a successor."
It made a sorry end, this falling-out by the victors, after all the
glory that had been garnered up the Red and on the Saline; Dick Taylor
was afterwards far from proud of his conduct in the quarrel, and set it
down as the result of overwork and nervous strain. For the present,
though, he was not unhappy to be reunited with his wife and children
in Natchitoches, the lovely old French-Spanish town he recently had
saved from Sherman's burners, there to await the judgment of his presi-
dential brother-in-law.
X 3 X
Davis had troubles enough by then, and differences enough to attempt
to compose, without the added problem of trying to heal this latest
split between two of his friends, one of whom was among the nation's
ranking field commanders, responsible for the conduct of affairs in the
largest of all its military departments, while the other was his first wife's
younger brother. Down in Georgia, for example, on March 10 — the
day A. J. Smith's gorillas left Vicksburg, beginning the ten-week
campaign that would take them up and down Red River, and the day be-
fore Grant left Washington for the meeting with Sherman in Nashville,
where they would begin to plan the campaign designed to bring Georgia
to its knees and the Confederacy to extinction — Governor Joseph E.
Another Grand Design [ 93 ]
Brown addressed the state legislature, which he had called into special
session to hear some things he had to say on the subject of the war.
What he had to say, in essence, was that the war had been a failure.
This was not only because it was now to be waged on his doorstep, so
to speak, but also because, as he saw it, the authorities in Richmond had
abandoned the principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence,
including "all self-government and the sovereignty of the States."
Brown's solution, as set forth in his address, was for the Confed-
eracy to dissolve itself into its components, thus calling a halt to discord
and bloodshed: after which, in an atmosphere of peace and fellowship,
a convention of northern and southern governors would assemble at
Baltimore or A4emphis, Montreal or the Bermuda Islands, and each state,
North as well as South, would "determine for herself what shall be
her future connection, and who her future allies." In other words, he
would stop and start anew, this time without taking so many wrong
turnings in the pursuit of happiness along the path that led to independ-
ence. Brown was careful, in the course of his speech, not to propose
that Georgia rejoin the Union. That would have amounted to outright
treason. He proposed, rather, that the Union rejoin Georgia, and he
favored "negotiation" as the means of achieving this end. "In a crisis
like the present," he maintained, "Statesmanship is ever more important
than Generalship. Generals can never stop a war, though it may last
twenty years till one has been able to conquer the other. Statesmen
terminate wars by negotiation."
Praised for its acumen or condemned as disloyal, the address
pleased some of its hearers and outraged others, depending largely on
their predilections. Politically, an observer remarked, "Georgia was rent
asunder." Among the governor's firmest supporters, though he was not
in Adilledgeville to hear him, was Alexander H. Stephens, Vice President
of the Confederacy. Stephens not only gave the speech his full
approval — as well he might; "I advised it from stem to stern," he
admitted privately — but arrived in person six days later from Liberty
Hall, his estate at nearby Crawfordville, to reinforce it with one of his
own, twice as long and twice as bitter, in which he lashed out at the
national authorities for their betrayal of the secessionist cause by adopt-
ing conscription and suspending the writ of habeas corpus. "Better, in
my judgment," he declared, "that Richmond should fall and that the
enemy's armies should sweep our whole country from the Potomac to
the Gulf than that our people should submissively yield to one of these
edicts." A small, pale-faced man with burning eyes and a shrill voice,
weighing less than a hundred pounds in. the voluminous overcoat he
wore against the chill he felt in all but the hottest weather, he spoke for
three full hours, in the course of which he sustained at several points a
critic's charge that his alarm "had long ago vaulted into the hysterical."
Where personal freedom was concerned Stephens rejected all argu-
[94] THE CIVIL WAR3P* 1864
ments as to expediency. "Away with the idea of getting our independ-
ence first, and looking after liberty afterward!" he cried, "Our liberties,
once lost, may be lost forever." If he had to be ruled by a despot, he
said darkly, he preferred that it be a northern one, and he closed on a
dramatic note, quite as if he expected to be clapped in arrest by govern-
ment agents as soon as he came down off the rostrum. "I do not know
that I shall ever address you again, or see you again," he told the legis-
lators filling the chamber, row on row, from wall to wall. "As for my-
self," he added by way of farewell — though he knew, as Patrick
Henry had not known before him, that the authority he assailed would
not dare call him to account — "give me liberty as secured in the
Constitution, amongst which is the sovereignty of Georgia, or give me
death!"
He proceeded not to the dungeon he had seemed to predict, but
back to Liberty Hall, where he continued to fulminate, in letters and
interviews, against the government of which he was nominally a part
and the man whose place he would take in case of death or the impeach-
ment he appeared to recommend. Reproached by a constituent for
having "allowed your antipathy to Davis to mislead your judgment,"
Stephens denied that he harbored any such enmity in his bosom. "I
have regarded him as a man of good intentions," he replied, "weak and
vacillating, petulant, peevish, obstinate but not firm." Having gone so
far, however, he then revoked the disclaimer by adding: "Am now be-
ginning to doubt his good intentions." Meantime, back in Milledgeville,
Brown's managers were steering through the legislature a double set of
resolutions introduced by Little Aleck's younger brother Linton, one
condemning the Richmond authorities for having overriden the Con-
stitution, the other defining Georgia's terms for peace as a return,
North and South, to the "principles of 1776." This took three days; the
governor had to threaten to hold the legislators in special session "in-
definitely" in order to ram the resolutions through; then on March 19
they passed them and were permitted to adjourn. Brown had his and the
Vice President's addresses printed in full, together with Linton Stephens's
resolutions, and distributed copies to all the Georgia soldiers in the armies
of Lee and Johnston.
Stephens and Brown were two of the more unpleasant facts of
Confederate life that had to be faced in Richmond by officials trying
to get on with a long-odds war amid runaway inflation and spreading
disaffection. Others were nearer at hand. In North Carolina, for ex-
ample — that "vale of humility," a native called the state, "nestled be-
tween two humps of pride," Virginia and South Carolina — the yearn-
ing for peace had grown in ratio to a general disenchantment with
"glory," of which the war, according to Governor Zebulon Vance,
had afforded the Old North State too meager a share. Less bitter than
Joe Brown — of whom a fellow Georgian was saying this spring,
Another Grand Design [ 95 ]
"Wherever you meet a growling, complaining, sore-headed man, hostile
to the government and denunciatory of its measures and policy, or a
croaking, despondent dyspeptic who sees no hope for the country, but,
whipped himself, is trying to make everybody else feel as badly as him-
self, you will invariably find a friend, admirer, and defender of
Governor Brown" — Vance was an unrelenting critic of the ways
things were done or left undone at Richmond, and his correspondence
was heavy with complaints, made directly to the President, that Carolin-
ians were constantly being slighted in the distribution of promotions
and appointments. Late in March, Davis lost patience and sought to
break off the exchange, protesting that Vance had "so far infringed the
proprieties of official intercourse as to preclude the possibility of reply.
In order that I may not again be subjected to the necessity of making
so unpleasant a remark, I must beg that a correspondence so unprofitable
in its character, and which was not initiated by me, may here end, and
that your future communications be restricted to such matters as may
require official action." But Vance, a self-made man from old Buncombe
County, had long since learned the political value of persistence; he was
not so easily restrained. Scarcely a mail arrived from Raleigh that did
not include a protest by the governor that some worthy Tarheel had
been snubbed or overlooked in the passing out of favors, military as
well as civil. Davis could only read and sigh, thankful at least that Vance
kept his distance, even though it was not so great as the distance Brown
and Stephens kept.
That was by no means the case with Edward A. Pollard, who
was not only very much at hand as associate editor of the Richmond
Examiner, but also took the trouble to let the authorities know it
daily. He often seemed to despise the Confederacy to its roots, and
seldom relaxed in his efforts to impale its chief executive on what was
agreed to be the sharpest pen in the journalistic South. Invective was
his specialty, and when he got on his favorite subject — Jefferson
Davis — he sometimes raised this specialty to an art. "Serene upon the
frigid heights of infallible egotism," the Kentucky-born A4ississippian
was "affable, kind, and subservient to his enemies" but "haughty, austere,
and unbending to his friends," and though he assumed "the superior
dignity of a satrap," he was in fact, behind the rigid mask, "an amalgam
of malice and mediocrity." Future historians of various persuasions were
to take their cue from this carving-up of a man on his wrong side; it was
small wonder that Pollard, who spoke with the gadfly rancor of
Thersites, found many who nodded in gleeful agreement as they read
his jabs and jibes. They read him, in this fourth and gloomiest spring of
a war they had begun to believe they could not win, to find relief from
a frustration which grew, like his own, in ratio to the dwindling of
their hopes.
Thoroughly familiar with the American proclivity for blaming
[96] THE CIVIL WAR3P" 1864
national woes on the national leader, Davis had engaged in the practice
too often himself not to expect it to be turned against him. He viewed
it as an occupational hazard, one that more or less went with his job,
and he spoke of it as a man might speak of any natural phenomenon —
gravity, say, or atmospheric pressure — which could not be abolished
simply because it bore within it the seeds of possible disaster. "Opposi-
tion in any form can only disturb me inasmuch as it may endanger the
public welfare/' he had said. Moreover, no one could sympathize more
with the people who felt this fourth-spring frustration, for no one was
in a position to know as well how soundly based the feeling was. Such
blame as he attached to men like Stephens and Brown and Pollard was
not for entertaining, but rather for giving vent to their defeatist con-
clusions, since by so doing they betrayed their high positions, convert-
ing them to rostrums for the spreading of despair, and did indeed "en-
danger the public welfare." As for the frustration itself, Davis not only
sympathized with, he shared it. However much he might condemn
those who gave way under pressure, he knew only too well how great
that pressure was: especially for those who saw the problem, as he did,
from within. Wherever he looked he perceived that the Confederacy's
efforts to "conquer a peace" were doomed to failure. And this applied
most obviously to the three most obvious fields for aggressive endeavor,
whereby the South might attempt to force its will upon its mortal
adversary: 1) by entering upon negotiations with representatives from
the North to obtain acceptable peace terms, 2) by mounting and sus-
taining a military offensive which would end with the imposition of
such terms, or 3) by securing the foreign recognition and assistance
which would afford the moral and physical strength now lacking to
achieve the other two.
As for the first of these, Davis had pointed out the difficulty, if
not the impossibility, of pursuing this line of endeavor three months
ago in response to a letter from Governor Vance, in which the Carolin-
ian urged that attempts be made to negotiate with the enemy, not only
because such an expression of willingness on the part of the South to
stop shooting and start talking would "convince the humblest of our
citizens . . . that the government is tender of their lives and happiness,
and would not prolong their sufferings unnecessarily one moment," but
also because the rejection by the North of such an offer would "tend
greatly to strengthen and intensify the war feeling [of our people]
and will rally all classes to a more cordial support of the government."
Davis replied that while such results were highly desirable, "insuperable
objections" stood in the way of their being achieved. One was that, by
the simple northern device of refusing to confer with "rebel" envoys,
all such offers — except to the extent that they were "received as proof
that we are ready for submission" — had been rejected out of hand.
He himself had seldom neglected an opportunity, in his public addresses
Another Grand Design [ 97 ]
and messages to Congress, to inform the enemy and the world that "All
we ask is to be let alone." Nothing had come of this, in or out of official
channels, and it was becoming increasingly clear that to continue such
efforts was "to invite insult and contumely, and to subject ourselves to
indignity, without the slightest chance of being listened to."
Suppose, though, that they did somehow manage to break through
the barrier of silence. What would that do, Davis asked, but confront
them with another barrier, still more "insuperable" than the first? "It is
with Lincoln alone that we could confer," he reminded Vance, "and
his own partisans at the North avow unequivocally that his purpose in
his message and proclamation [of Amnesty and Reconstruction] was to
shut out all hope that he would ever treat with us, on any terms." The
northern President himself had made this clear and certain, according
to Davis. "Have we not been apprised by that despot that we can only
expect his gracious pardon by emancipating all our slaves, swearing
obedience to him and his proclamation, and becoming in point of fact
the slaves of our own Negroes?" In the light of this, he asked further,
"can there be in North Carolina one citizen so fallen beneath the dignity
of his ancestors as to accept or enter into conference on the basis of
these terms? That there are a few traitors in the state who would be
willing to betray their fellow citizens to such a degraded condition, in
hope of being rewarded for their treachery by an escape from the com-
mon doom, may be true. But I do not believe that the vilest wretch would
accept such terms for himself."
Having gone so far — for the letter was a long one, written in the
days before he sought to break off corresponding with the Tarheel
governor — Davis then proceeded to the inevitable conclusion that
peace, if it was to come at all, would have to be won by force of arms.
"To obtain the sole terms to which you or I could listen," he told
Vance, "this struggle must continue until the enemy is beaten out of his
vain confidence in our subjugation. Then and not till then will it be
possible to treat of peace."
That brought him to the second, and much the bloodiest, of his
three aggressive choices: the launching of an offensive that would not
stop short of the table across which peace terms would be dictated to an
enemy obliged to accept them as a condition of survival in defeat.
Pleasant though this was to contemplate as a fitting end to slaughter
and privation, it amounted to little more than an exercise in the realm of
fantasy. If three blood-drenched years of war, and three aborted inva-
sions of the North, had taught anything, they had taught that, however
the conflict was going to end, it was not going to end this way. Davis,
for one, never stopped hoping that it might, and even now was urging a
course of action on Joe Johnston, down in Georgia, designed to bring
about just such a closing scene. That the general declined to march all-
out against the Union center was not surprising; Johnston had always
[98] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
bridled at cut-and-slash urgings or suggestions, and in this case, out-
numbered and outgunned as he was, he protested with ample cause.
Nor was he the only one to demonstrate reluctance. "Our role must be
a defensive policy," Kirby Smith was warning his impetuous lieutenants
out in the Transmississippi; while nearer at hand, and weightiest by far
in that regard, the nation's ranking field commander was tendering
much the same advice to his superior in Richmond. The most aggressive
of all the Confederate military chieftains — indeed, one of the most
aggressive soldiers of all time, of whom a subordinate had declared,
quite accurately, on the occasion of his appointment to head the
Virginia army, just under two years ago: "His name might be Audacity.
He will take more chances, and take them quicker, than any other
general in this country, North or South" — R. E. Lee had taken care,
well before the occasion could arise, to forestall even the suggestion
that he attempt another large-scale offensive when the present "mud
truce" ended in the East. Back in early February, in response to a
presidential request for counsel, he said flatly: "We are not in a condi-
tion, and never have been, in my opinion, to invade the enemy's country
with a prospect of permanent benefit."
There Davis had it. For though Lee added characteristically that
he hoped, by a limited show of force, to "alarm and embarrass [the
enemy] to some extent, and thus prevent his undertaking anything of
magnitude against us," this was no real modification of his implied
opinion that past efforts to end the war on northern soil — his own two,
which had broken in blood along Sharpsburg ridge and across the
stony fields of Gettysburg, as well as Bragg's, which had gone into re-
verse at Perry ville — had been errors of judgment, serving, if for
nothing else, to demonstrate the folly of any attempt at repetition of
them. Such a statement, from such a source, was practically irrefutable,
especially since it was echoed by the commanders of the other two major
theaters, Smith and Johnston. The war, if it was to be won at all by
southern arms, would have to be won on southern ground.
Third and last of these choices, the securing of foreign recognition
and assistance, had long been the cherished hope of Confederate states-
men: especially Davis, who had uttered scarcely a public word through
the first twenty months of the war that did not look toward intervention
by one or another of the European powers. However, as time wore on
it became clearer that nothing was going to come of such efforts and
expectations — Russia had been pro-Union from the start, and France,
whatever her true desires might be, could not act without England,
where the Liberals in power took their cue from voters who were pre-
dominantly anti-slavery and therefore, in accordance with Lincoln's
persuasions, anti-Confederate — the southern President, smarting under
the snubs his unacknowledged envoys suffered, grew increasingly petu-
lant and less guarded in his reaction. Fifteen months ago, addressing his
Another Grand Design [ 99 ]
home-state legislature on the first of his western journeys to revive
confidence and bolster morale, he lost patience for the first time in
public. " 'Put not your trust in princes,' " he advised, "and rest not your
hopes on foreign nations. This war is ours; we must fight it out our-
selves." The applause this drew, plus the growing conviction that noth-
ing any Confederate said or did had any effect whatever on the outcome
in Europe, encouraged further remarks along this line. Nor was his
reaction limited to remarks. In June of 1863, with Lee on the march
for Gettysburg and Vicksburg soon to fall, the exequatur of the British
consul at Richmond was revoked. The presence of such consuls had
long been irksome, not only because they sought to interfere in such
matters as the conscription of British nationals and the collection of
British debts, but also because they were accredited to a foreign power,
the United States, rather than to the country in which they operated,
the Confederate States, whose very existence their government denied
except as a "belligerent." The strain increased. In August, James M.
Mason, the still unreceived ambassador to England, was told to
consider his mission at an end, and before the following month was
out he gave up his London residence and removed the diplomatic ar-
chives to Paris. In October the final strings were cut. Declaring their
continued presence at Charleston, Savannah, and Mobile "an unwar-
ranted assumption of jurisdiction," as well as "an offensive encroach-
ment," Davis expelled all British consular agents from the South.
In Paris, Mason found the position of his fellow ambassador, John
Slidell, highly enviable at first glance. Fluent in New Orleans French,
the urbane Louisianian had practically free — though, alas, unofficial —
access to Napoleon and Eugenie, both of whom were sympathetic to
his cause; or so they kept assuring him, although nothing tangible in the
way of help had so far proceeded from their concern. In many ways,
the situation in Paris was more frustrating than the one in London,
where Mason's non-reception at least had not built up hopes that came
to nothing every time. By now, as a result of such recurrent disappoint-
ments, Slidell had become convinced that he was being led along for
some purpose he could not fathom, but which he suspected would be
of little benefit, in the end, either to him personally or to the govern-
ment he represented. Disenchanted with the postcard Emperor, he was
turning bitter in his attitude toward his job. "I find it very difficult to
keep my temper amidst all this double dealing," he informed his friend
and chief, Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin. In point of fact, his
experiences at court seemed to have jaundiced him entirely, for he
added, by way of general observation: "This is a rascally world, and it
is most hard to say who can be trusted."
What it came down to, in the end as in the beginning, whether
Slidell was right or wrong about Napoleon and his motives, was that
France could not act without England. And now, as the war moved
[ioo] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
into its fourth critical spring, Davis could not resist lodging a protest
which, in effect, burned the last bridge that might have led to a rap-
prochement with that all-important power. The trouble stemmed from
British acceptance of evidence supplied by U.S. Ambassador Charles
Francis Adams that certain warships under construction by the Lairds
of Liverpool, ostensibly for the Viceroy of Egypt, were in fact to be
sold to the Confederacy, which intended to use these powerful steam
rams to shatter the Union blockade. "It would be superfluous in me to
point out to your lordship that this is war," Adams informed Foreign
Secretary Lord John Russell. It was indeed superfluous, since Russell,
already alarmed by Seward's tail-twisting threats along that line, had
previously taken steps to prevent delivery of the vessels by detaining
them. That was in September, six months ago, and as if this was not
enough to placate Seward there arrived in Richmond on April i — not
through regular diplomatic channels, but by special courier under a flag
of truce, as between belligerents — a message for Jefferson Davis from
Lord Richard Lyons, the British minister in Washington, containing
an extract from a dispatch lately sent by Russell protesting "against
the efforts of the authorities of the so-called Confederate States to
build war vessels within Her Majesty's dominions to be employed
against the Government of the United States."
Davis bristled. Hard as this governmental decision was to take —
for the matter was still in litigation in the British courts, and he hoped
for a favorable outcome there — the phrase "so-called" cut deeper,
adding insult to injury as it did. Never one to accept a slight, let alone
a snub, the Mississippian summoned his secretary and dictated a third-
person reply. "The President desires me to say to your Lordship, that . . .
it would be inconsistent with the dignity of the position he fills, as
Chief Magistrate of a nation comprising a population of more than twelve
millions, occupying a territory many times larger than the United
Kingdom ... to allow the attempt of Earl Russell to ignore the actual
existence of the Confederate States, and to contumeliously style them
'so-called,' to pass without a protest and a remonstrance. The President,
therefore, does protest and remonstrate against this studied insult, and
he instructs me to say that in future any document in which it may be
repeated will be returned unanswered and unnoticed." Lyons had not
used diplomatic channels for delivery of his message; Davis, stung in
his national pride, did not use diplomacy at all in his response. Warming
as he dictated, he termed British neutrality "a cover for treacherous,
malignant hostility," and closed with an icy pretense of indifference.
"As for the specious arguments on the subject of the rams . . . while
those questions are still before the highest legal tribune of the kingdom
. . . the President himself will not condescend to notice them." The
signature read, "Burton N. Harrison, Private Secretary."
Such satisfaction as Davis got from thus berating the Foreign
Another Grand Design [ 101 ]
Secretary for his government's "persistent persecution of the Con-
federate States at the beck and bidding of officers of the United States"
was small recompense for the knowledge that the South, engaged in
what its people liked to think of as the Second American Revolution,
would have no help from Europe in its struggle for independence. And
what made this especially bitter to accept was a general historical agree-
ment that in the original Revolution, with the Colonists in much the
same position the Confederates were in now — unable, on the face of
it, either to enforce or to negotiate a peace — such help had made the
difference between victory and defeat. "This war is ours; we must fight
it out ourselves," Davis had warned, by way of prelude to a year of hard
reverses, and though the words were bravely spoken and loudly ap-
plauded at the time, there was sadness in the afterthought of what they
meant in terms of the lengthening odds against success or even survival.
Militarily, the handwriting on the wall was all too clear. In late No-
vember, within five months of the staggering midsummer news from
Gettysburg and Vicksburg that Lee's army had been crippled and
Pemberton's abolished, Bragg's army was flung bodily off Lookout
Mountain and Missionary Ridge, impregnable though both positions
had been said to be, and harried southward into Georgia. With these
defeats in mind, it was no wonder that every Sunday at Saint Paul's in
Richmond — the obvious goal of the huge offensive the North was
about to launch as a follow-up of its triumphs, east and west, over the
three main armies on which the Confederacy had depended for exist-
ence — the congregation recited the Litany with special fervor when
it reached the words, "From battle and murder, and from sudden death,
good Lord, deliver us."
The good Lord might, at that. For though military logic showed
that the South could not win an offensive war, fought beyond the
Potomac or the Ohio, there was still a chance that it could win a defen-
sive one, fought on its own territory. It could win, in short, because the
North could lose. In his letter to Vance, defining the conditions for
peace under "the sole terms to which you or I could listen," Davis had
not simply declared that the enemy must be beaten, period. He had
said that the enemy must be "beaten out of his vain confidence in our
subjugation," which was quite another thing. What he was saying was
that for the North, committed by necessity to achieving an unconditional
surrender, to settle for anything less than total conquest would amount
to giving the South the victory by default. Lincoln knew this as well as
Davis did, of course, and was not likely to cooperate in the dismemberment
he had pledged himself to prevent. Yet the whole say-so would not be
Lincoln's. Beyond the looming figure of the northern leader were the
northern soldiers, and behind them were the northern people. If either
became discouraged enough, soldiers or civilians, the war would end
on terms not only acceptable but welcome to the South. The problem
[ io2 ] THE CIVIL WAR3T1864
was how to get at them, beyond the loom of their leader, in order to
influence their outlook and their choice. Davis saw cause for hope in
both directions — tactical on one hand, political on the other — if cer-
tain requirements could be met.
Paradoxically, the tactical hope resulted from past Confederate de-
feats. Davis saw in every loss of mere territory — Nashville and Middle
Tennessee, New Orleans, even Vicksburg and the Mississippi and the
amputation of all that lay beyond — a corresponding gain, not only be-
cause what had been lost no longer required a dispersal of the country's
limited strength for its protection, but also because the resultant con-
traction allowed a more compact defense of what remained. What re-
mained now was the heartland, an 8oo-mile-wide triangle roughly
defined by lines connecting Richmond, Savannah, and Mobile. Agricul-
turally and industrially, as well as geographically, this was the irreducible
hard core of the nation, containing within it the resources and facilities
to support a war of infinite length and intensity, so long as it and its
people's will to fight remained intact. How long that would have to
be, not in theory but in fact, depended on the validity of the companion
political hope, according to which it would only be until November —
specifically, the first Tuesday after the first Monday in that month —
or, at worst, until early the following March — specifically, Inaugura-
tion Day. For this was a presidential election year in the North. The
northern people, restrained by an iron hand these past three years,
would finally have the chance to speak their minds on the question of
war or peace, and the southern leader did not doubt that if his tactical
hope was fulfilled — if no great Union victory, worth the agony to the
army and the sorrow on the home front, was scored within that eight-
month span by the blue drive on the heartland — his political hope
would be fulfilled in turn. Weary of profitless bloodshed, the northern
people would vote to end the war by turning Lincoln out of office and
replacing him with a man who preferred to see half the nation depart
in peace, as the saying went, rather than to continue the aimless destruc-
tion the two halves would have been visiting on each other for nearly
three years. That was the prospect Davis had referred to, four months
ago, when he declared in his State of the Nation address, opening the
fourth session of Congress: "We now know that the only reliable hope
for peace is in the vigor of our resistance, while the cessation of hostility
[on the part of our adversaries] is only to be expected from the pressure
of their necessities."
In brief, the problem between now and November was how to add
to the North's war weariness, already believed to be substantial in certain
regions where Copperheads were rampant, without at the same time
increasing the South's disconsolation beyond the point of no return. This
might or might not be possible, in light of the long odds, but in any
case the prerequisite was that the northern people were to be denied the
Another Grand Design [ 103 ]
tonic of a large-scale victory within the triangular confines of the
secessionist heartland — especially a tonic of the spirit-lifting kind that
had come with the celebration of such victories as Vicksburg and
Missionary Ridge, which had seemed to show beyond denial that a blue
army could rout or capture a gray one as the result of a confrontation
wherein Federal generalship was up to the standard set by the Con-
federates in the first two years of the war. Moreover, the general who
had designed and directed both of those triumphs was now in over-all
command of the Union forces, presumably chafing for the mud truce
to end so he could get his armies headed south. Given the conditions that
obtained in regard to numbers and equipment, plus the lightweight
boxer's need for yielding ground in order to stay free to bob and weave
and thus avoid a slugging match with his heavyweight opponent, there
were bound to be southern losses and northern gains in the months im-
mediately ahead; but that was not in itself a ruinous concession by the
South, provided the losses and gains could be kept respectively minor
and high-priced. In fact, such losses would serve admirably to drive
home to the North the point that the prize was by no means worth the
effort. The object was to make each gain so costly in blood and tears
that the expense would be clearly disproportionate to the profit — if
not in the judgment of the Federal high command, whose political or
professional survival depended on continuing the conflict, then at any
rate in the minds of those who would be casting their ballots in No-
vember, many of whom had an intensely personal interest in the casualty
lists, future as well as past, and who might therefore be persuaded that
their survival, unlike their leaders', depended on bringing the conflict to
a close. Thus the South would be waging war not only on its own terrain
(an advantage from which it had profited largely in the past) but also
in the minds of northern voters who would be going to the polls, under
what Davis termed "the pressure of their necessities" some seven months
from now, to register a decision as to whether sustaining Lincoln's reso-
lution that the rebels not be allowed to depart in peace was w T orth the
continuing loss of their blue-clad sons and brothers and nephews and
grandsons down in Georgia and Virginia.
Time and time alone would provide the answer to the question
of survival; Patrick Henry's "liberty or death" applied quite literally
to Confederate hopes and fears, which had between them no middle
ground a man could stand on, patriot or traitor. Give or take a week
or two, depending on the weather, the six months that would follow
the end of large-scale inactivity in Georgia and Virginia, where the
major forces lay mud-bound in their camps, would decide the issue,
since Lincoln's appeal on that all-important Tuesday in November was
likely to be in ratio to the progress of his soldiers in the field. Meantime,
though, while the outsized armies on both sides took their ease and
[ io 4 ] THE CIVIL WAR3T1864
prepared as best they could for the shock to come, lesser forces had not
been idle, east or west. And for the most part, when the military balance
sheet was struck, the result of these out-of-season confrontations was
encouraging to the hopes of the South for continuing its resistance to
the superior weight the North could bring to bear.
Of these several upbeat Confederate successes — for though it
was by far the most remote (Shreveport and Richmond were a thousand
air-line miles apart; communication between them was necessarily slow
and at best uncertain) it was not only the largest in numbers engaged, it
was also achieved against the longest odds — the most encouraging was
Kirby Smith's frustration of the double-pronged offensive designed by
the Federals for completion of their conquest of the Transmississippi. All
through the last half of A4arch and the first half of April, the news from
Louisiana and Arkansas had been gloomy; Banks and Steele appeared
unstoppable in their respective penetrations, across the width and down
the length of those two states, with Texas obviously next on the in-
exorable blue list. Then came word of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill, of
Prairie d'Ane and Poison Spring; Steele and Banks were in full retreat
from Price and Taylor, and Porter's dreaded ironclads were in flight
from probable capture or destruction, bumping their bottoms as they
scurried down the Red. It was incredible, and Camden and Jenkins
Ferry, like Mansura and Yellow Bayou, only added to the glory and the
uplift when news of them reached Richmond across those thousand
embattled air-line miles. Other successes had preceded this, and others
were to follow. Down in Florida, for example, an all-out Union effort
to return that scantly defended state to its old allegiance, in accordance
with Lincoln's recent proclamation, had been thrown into sudden re-
verse by Brigadier General Joseph Finegan's decisive late-February vic-
tory at Olustee, which drove the disarrayed invaders all the way back
to the banks of the Saint Johns River. About the same time, westward in
Mississippi, Sherman was slogging practically unopposed from Vicks-
burg to Meridian, where he was to be joined by a heavy cavalry column
from Memphis for a hundred-mile extension of the march to Selma, a
major industrial center whose destruction would do much to weaken
the South's ability to sustain its armies in the field. This went by the
board, however, when he learned that no cavalry column was any longer
moving toward him; Nathan Bedford Forrest, lately promoted to
major general with authority to raise a cavalry force of his own in the
region the blue troopers would traverse, had whipped them soundly at
Okolona, despite their two-to-one numerical advantage, and sent them
staggering back to Memphis, part afoot and the rest on mounts so
winded that two thirds of them were presently judged unfit for service.
Sherman, left marking time, had to be content with wrecking what he
held. "Meridian, with its depots, storehouses, arsenals, hospitals, offices,
hotels, and cantonments, no longer exists," he reported as his wreckers,
Another Grand Design [ 105 ]
having done their worst, fell in for the march back to Vicksburg. But
Selma still existed, together with all that Sherman listed and still more —
including its vital cannon foundry, which, thanks to Forrest and his
green command, continued to forge the heavy-caliber guns that would
tear the ranks of other columns of invasion in other quarters of the
South. Similarly the following week, as March came in, a raid by 3500
horsemen under Brigadier General Judson Kilpatrick, intended to
achieve the liberation of an equal number of prisoners held in Richmond,
was turned back at the city limits by old men and boys, home guardsmen
serving worn-out artillery pieces long since replaced by new ones,
captured or manufactured, in the batteries with Lee on the Rapidan.
Soon regular graybacks arrived from there, overtaking the raiders who
had slipped past them two nights ago, and harried the survivors into the
Union lines, well down the York-James peninsula. Like March itself,
Kilpatrick (called "Kill Cavalry" now) had come in like a lion and
gone out like a lamb, and Richmonders were proud of their scratch re-
sistance in the emergency that prevailed until the regulars came up.
Olustee and Okolona, like the improvised action that marked the
limit of Kilpatrick's penetration, were primarily defensive victories,
counterpunches landed solidly in response to Federal leads. But now,
between mid-March and mid-April, there followed two exploits that
were even more encouraging to Confederate hopes, though admittedly
on a limited scale, because they proved that the South could still defy
the lengthening odds by mounting and being successful in offensive
operations. One was eastern, necessarily amphibious since it occurred
in the region giving down upon the North Carolina sounds, while the other
was western, staged throughout the length of the critical geographical
corridor that lay between the Tennessee River and the Mississippi and
extended all the way north to Kentucky's upper border, the Ohio, whose
waters no uniformed Confederate had gazed upon since John Morgan's
troopers crossed it, ten months ago, on the ill-fated raid from which the
colorful brigadier himself had returned only by breaking out of prison.
Forrest, in command of what he called "the Cavalry Department
of West Tennessee and North Mississippi," had never stopped thinking
of this river-bound, 100-mile-wide, 200-mile-long stretch of land as
belonging to him, particularly as a recruiting area, although all of it lay
well beyond the Union lines and had done so in fact for nearly two
years now. For him, as for most of his men — North Mississippians,
West Tennesseans, and Kentuckians — the region was home, and he
and they looked forward to returning there, if only on a visit. Indeed,
he had already done so twice since it passed into northern hands, once
at the beginning and once at the end of the year just past, and now he
was going back for the third time. Accordingly, after disposing of
Sherman's troopers by chasing them pell-mell into Memphis, he reor-
ganized his own, grown to a strength of about 5000 and seasoned by
[io6] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
their recent victory, into two divisions, commanded by Brigadier Gen-
erals Abraham Buford and James R. Chalmers, and set out northward
with one of them — Buf ord's — on March 1 5 from his headquarters at
Columbus, Mississippi. There were, he said, some 3000 recruits still
available in West Tennessee, and he intended to have them, along with
much else that was there in the way of horses and equipment which
now were U.S. Army property.
The alarm went out at once to Federal garrisons in all three states
bordering the Mississippi south of the Ohio; Forrest was much feared,
his unorthodox methods and slashing attacks, often delivered in utter
disregard of the odds and the tactics manuals, having led one blue op-
ponent to protest that he was "constantly doing the unexpected at all
times and places." Nor did all the complaints have their origin beyond
the enemy lines. Some Southerners had their objections, too, although
these were primarily social. A former Memphis alderman and planter, a
self-made millionaire before the war, the forty-two-year-old Forrest
had not only been "in trade"; the trade had been in slaves. And though
some Southerners might fight for the peculiar institution, or send their
sons to fight for its preservation, they would not willingly associate with
others who made, or once had made, a living from it. "The dog's dead,"
a young Mississippi aristocrat wrote in his diary this winter. "Finally
we are under N. Bedford Forrest. ... I must express my distaste to
being commanded by a man having no pretension to gentility — a negro
trader, gambler — an ambitious man, careless of the lives of his men
so long as preferment be en prospectu. Forrest may be, and no doubt is,
the best cavalry officer in the West, but I object to a tyrrannical, hot-
headed vulgarian's commanding me."
In Jackson, Tennessee, on March 20 — presumably with the dis-
gruntled young grandee in tow — Forrest sent word for Chalmers to
take up the march, feinting at Memphis en route to add to the confusion
in his rear, and detached a regiment to move against Union City, up in
the northwest corner of the state. This was the 7th Tennessee Cavalry,
Confederate, and by coincidence the town was garrisoned by the 7th
Tennessee Cavalry, Union, whose surrender was accomplished in short
order four days later, March 24, by a pretense of overwhelming strength,
including the use of wheeled logs in place of guns (actually, there were
fewer troops outside than there were inside, while the outer 7th had no
guns at all) and a blood-curdling note, sent forward under a flag of
truce, which ended: "If you persist in defense, you must take the conse-
quences. N. B. Forrest, Major General, Commanding." The Union
colonel decided not to persist. Instead he surrendered his 481 men, to-
gether with 300 horses and a quantity of arms and stores — all, as the
colonel who had signed the general's name declared, "almost without
the loss of blood or the smell of powder." Sending his prisoners south,
where Chalmers was bristling as if on the verge of clattering into
Another Grand Design [ 107 ]
Memphis, he rode hard to catch up with the main column, which
Forrest had led northward through Trenton two days ago, then across
the Kentucky line near Fulton, to descend on Paducah in the early
afternoon of the following day, March 25, having covered the final
muddy hundred miles in fifty hours.
Paducah, strategically located at the confluence of the Tennessee
and the Ohio, was an important Union supply base, and it was supplies
the general was after, not the garrison, which retired posthaste into a
stoutly fortified earthwork supported by two gunboats patrolling the
river in its rear. While sending in his usual demand for an unconditional
surrender — "If you surrender you shall be treated as prisoners of war,
but if I have to storm your works you may expect no quarter" — Forrest
put his troopers to work on the unprotected depot, gleaning what he
later reported to be "a large amount of clothing, several hundred horses,
and a large lot of medical stores," along with about fifty prisoners who
had not made it into the fort before the gates were shut. Inside, the blue
commander declined to capitulate despite continued threats and demon-
strations, including one all-out attack that was launched by a Kentucky
regiment whose colonel, a native of Paducah, disobeyed restraining
orders, apparently in an excess of pride and joy at being home again,
and led a charge in which he and some two dozen of his men were killed
or wounded. These were the only Confederate casualties, although the
town itself was badly damaged by shells thrown into it from the gun-
boats and the fort. At midnight, having gathered up everything portable
and destroyed much that was not — a government steamboat found in
dry dock, for example, and a number of bales of precious cotton await-
ing shipment on the landing — Forrest withdrew in the direction from
which he had appeared, eight hours before. At Mayfield, a dozen miles
southwest, he halted to give his captives a head start south and to
furlough his three Kentucky regiments, with instructions to go to their
nearby homes for a week, there to secure new clothes and mounts, at
the end of which time they would reassemble at Trenton, fifty miles
south of the Tennessee line. This they did, on schedule and to a man,
many of them accompanied by recruits, fellow Kentuckians anxious for
service under "the Wizard of the Saddle," as Forrest was beginning to
be called.
He was by then in Jackson, planning another strike before he
ended what was afterward referred to as his "occupation" of West
Tennessee. His losses so far, including those of Chalmers, who had been
skirmishing much of the time near Memphis, amounted to 1 5 killed and
42 wounded, as compared to Federal losses of 79 killed, 102 wounded,
and 612 captured. This was a clear gain, but there was more. While
planning a sudden enlargement of these figures, he did not neglect the
normal intelligence-gathering duties of cavalry on the prowl. In fact,
from his vantage point well within the enemy lines — even as Grant was
[ 108] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
at work on the details in Washington, Cincinnati, Culpeper, and else-
where — Forrest not only saw through the latest Union "grand design"
for the conquest of the South, he also recommended a method by which
he believed it could be frustrated, if not shattered, at least in the western
theater. "I am of the opinion," he wrote Joe Johnston on April 6, "that
everything available is being concentrated against General Lee and
yourself. Am also of opinion that if all the cavalry in this and your own
department could be moved against Nashville that the enemy's com-
munication could be broken up." What would come of this plea that he
be turned loose on Sherman's life line remained to be seen. For the pres-
ent, however, he had a lesser blow in mind, one that he had mentioned
two days earlier in a report to Polk, whereby he intended to mount and
equip his growing number of recruits: "There is a Federal force of 500
or 600 at Fort Pillow which I shall attend to in a day or two, as they
have horses and supplies which we need."
Fort Pillow, established originally by the Confederates atop a
bluff overlooking the Mississippi forty miles above Memphis, had been in
enemy hands for nearly two years, ever since the evacuation of Corinth
following Shiloh, and was garrisoned by a force of about 550. Half were
Negroes, former slaves who had volunteered for service in the army
that freed them in the course of its occupation of the plantations they
had worked on, while the other half were Union-loyal whites; "Tennes-
see Tories" and "Homemade Yankees," their since-departed neighbors,
many of whom now rode with Forrest, contemptuously styled the
latter. This was the place and these were the men Forrest had said he
would "attend to," and accordingly, by way of creating a diversion, he
sent Buford with one brigade to menace Columbus and ride back into
Paducah, where newspapers were boasting that he had overlooked 140
fine government horses kept hidden in an old rolling mill throughout
the recent raid. Buford's instructions were to get those horses and, in
the process, draw the enemy's attention northward, away from Pillow,
which would be attacked by his other brigade and one from Chalmers,
who was told to come along and take command of both — 1500 men in
all — for the march, which got under way on April 10, and the invest-
ment, which began at daylight two days later. Northward, on the
Mississippi and the Ohio, Buford carried out his assignment to the letter,
detaching a couple of companies to menace Columbus while he rode
with the main body into Paducah at noon on April 14. There, as before,
the defenders fell back to their fortified position, and the raiders gath-
ered up the horses they had missed three weeks ago. Returning south
across the Tennessee line next day, they found that Chalmers too had
carried out his assignment to the letter: so zealously so, in fact, that he
and his men and Forrest, who was in over-all command, were already
being widely accused of having committed the atrocity of the war. "The
Fort Pillow Massacre," it was called, then and thereafter, in the North.
Another Grand Design [ 109 ]
Arriving at dawn of April 12 Chalmers had the fort invested by
the time Forrest came up at midmorning and took over. Pillow's original
trace, some two miles long and an average 600 yards in depth, had been
reduced to about half that by the Confederates before their evacuation,
and now the Federals had contracted it still farther into a single earth-
work, 125 yards in length, perched on the lip of the bluff and surrounded
on three sides by a ditch six feet deep and twelve feet wide. Parapets
four feet thick at the top and eight feet tall added greatly to the sense
of security when the defenders were driven in from their outer line
of rifle pits, although they presently found a drawback to this massive-
ness which the attackers were quick to exploit. "The width or thickness
of the works across the top," a rebel captain afterwards explained, "pre-
vented the garrison from firing down on us, as it could only be done
by mounting and exposing themselves to the unerring fire of our sharp-
shooters, posted behind stumps and logs on all the neighboring hills."
Their six guns were similarly disadvantaged, since the cannoneers could
not depress them enough to fire at the attackers at close range. "So far
as safety was concerned," the captain summed up, "we were as well
fortified as they were; the only difference was that they were on one
side and we were on the other of the same fortification." In partial com-
pensation, the Federals had a gunboat in support, which flung a total
of 282 rounds of shell, shrapnel, and canister at the dodging graybacks
in the course of the fight. Also, there was the reassuring thought of what
half a dozen double-shotted guns could do in the way of execution if
any mass of rebels tried to scale those high dirt walls and poke their
heads above that flat-topped parapet.
Forrest was thinking of that too, of course, but he did not let it
deter him any more than he did the loss of three horses shot from under
him in the course of the five hours he spent maneuvering for a closer
hug and waiting for the arrival of his ammunition train to refill the
nearly empty cartridge boxes of his rapid-firing troopers. Shortly after
3 o'clock the train arrived, and the general sent forward under a flag
of truce his usual grisly ultimatum. "Should my demand be refused,"
the note closed, "I cannot be responsible for the fate of your command."
By way of reply, the Union commander requested "one hour for
consultation with my officers and the officers of the gunboat." But
Forrest by now had spotted a steamer "apparently crowded with troops"
approaching, as well as "the smoke of three other boats ascending the
river." Believing that the Federals were stalling for time in which to
gain reinforcements and additional naval support, he replied that he
would give them twenty minutes and no more; "If at the expiration of
that time the fort is not surrendered, I shall assault it." Either because
he considered this a bluff, or else because he believed an assault was
bound to fail — his soldiers, white and black, apparently were of the
same conviction, for they had been taunting the rebels gleefully and
[no] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
profanely from the parapets throughout the cease-fire that attended the
exchange — the Union commander replied succinctly, "I will not sur-
render." Forrest had no sooner read the note than he turned to his
bugler and had him sound the charge.
The assault was brief and furious, practically bloodless up to a
point, and proceeded according to plan. While the sharpshooters back on
the hillsides kept up a harassing fire that skimmed the parapet, the first
wave of attackers rushed forward, leaped into the slippery six-foot ditch,
and crouched in the mud at the bottom, presenting their backs to the
men of the second wave, who thus were able to use them as stepping-
blocks to gain the narrow ledge between the ditch and the embankment
just beyond, then lean down and hoist their first-wave comrades up
beside them. It was as neatly done as if it had been rehearsed for weeks,
and in all this time not a shot had been fired except from the hillsides
and around on the flanks, where Forrest had other marksmen at work on
the gunboat. "Shoot at everything blue betwixt wind and water," he had
told them: with the result that the vessel, which had closed to canister
range, kept its ports tight shut to protect its gunners and took no part
in attempting a repulse. By now the attackers were all on the narrow
ledge, holding their unfired weapons at the ready and keeping their
heads well down while the hillside snipers continued to kick dirt on the
parapet, across whose width, although the graybacks were only a few
feet away, flattened against the opposite side of the earthwork, no mem-
ber of the garrison could fire without exposing two thirds of his body to
instant perforation. At a signal, the sharpshooters held their fire and the
men on the ledge went up and over the embankment, emptying their
pistols and rifles into the blue mass of defenders, who fought briefly
against panic, then broke rearward for a race to the landing at the foot
of the bluff, where they had been told that the gunboat, in the unlikely
event of a rebel breakthrough, would cover their withdrawal by pump-
ing grape and canister into the ranks of their pursuers.
It did not work out that way, not only because the gunboat was
shut up turtle-tight and took no part in the action, but also because the
graybacks were too close on their heels for the naval gunners to have
been able to fire without hitting their own men, even if they had tried.
Flailed from the rear by heavy downhill volleys, the running bluecoats
next were struck in the flanks by the troopers who had been shooting
at the gunboat. Some kept going, right on into the river, where a num-
ber drowned and the swimmers became targets for marksmen on the
bluff. Others, dropping their guns in terror, ran back toward the Con-
federates with their hands up, and of these some were spared as prison-
ers, while others were shot down in the act of surrender. "No quarter!
No quarter! " was being shouted at several points, and this was thought
by some to be at Forrest's command, since he had predicted and even
threatened that what was happening would happen. But the fact was,
Another Grand Design [ in ]
he had done and was doing all he could to end it, having ordered the
firing stopped as soon as he saw his troopers swarm into the fort, even
though its flag was still flying and a good part of the garrison was still
trying to get away. He and others managed to put an end to the kill-
ing and sort out the captives, wounded and unwounded. Out of a total
Federal force of 557, no less than 63 percent had been killed or wounded,
and of these about two thirds — 221, or forty percent of the whole —
had been killed. Forrest himself lost 14 killed and 86 wounded. Before
nightfall, having seen to the burial of the dead by the survivors, he
gathered up his spoils, including the six pieces of artillery, and moved
off with 226 prisoners, twenty of whom were men so lightly wounded
they could walk. Next morning he sent his adjutant, accompanied by a
captured Union captain, back to signal another gunboat — which had
resumed the shelling of the woods around the fort, unaware that there
was no longer anything Confederate there to shoot at, only Federals —
to put in, under a flag of truce, and take the more seriously wounded
aboard for treatment downriver in Memphis. That ended the Fort
Pillow operation.
But not the talk, the cultivated reaction which quickly mounted to
a pitch of outraged intensity unsurpassed until "the Rape of Belgium"
fifty years later, when propaganda methods were much improved by
wider and faster means of disseminating "eyewitness" accounts of such
"atrocities," true or false. Within six days a congressional committee —
strictly speaking, a subcommittee of the feared and ruthless Joint Com-
mittee on the Conduct of the War — left Washington for Tennessee,
having been appointed to gather "testimony in regard to the massacre at
Fort Pillow," and within another three days was taking depositions from
survivors, along with other interested parties, which resulted in a
voluminous printed report that the rebels had engaged in "indiscriminate
slaughter" of men, women, and children, white and black, and after-
wards had not only set barracks and tents afire, roasting the wounded in
their beds, but had also "buried some of the living with the dead," despite
their piteous cries for mercy while dirt was being shoveled on their
faces. "A/Iany other instances of equally atrocious cruelty might be
enumerated," the report concluded, "but your committee feels com-
pelled to refrain from giving here more of the heart-sickening details."
Southerners might protest that the document was "a tissue of lies from
end to end," as indeed it largely was, but they could scarcely argue with
the casualty figures, which indicated strongly that unnecessary killing
had occurred, although it was in fact the opposite of "indiscriminate."
For example, of the 262 Negro members of the garrison, only 58 — just
over twenty percent — were marched away as prisoners; while of the
295 whites, 168 — just under sixty percent — were taken. The rest were
either dead or in no shape for walking. Here was discrimination with a
vengeance, as well as support for a Confederate sergeant's testimony,
[ ii2 ] THE CIVIL WAR^" 1864
given in a letter written home within a week of the affair, describing
how "the poor, deluded negroes would run up to our men, fall upon
their knees and with uplifted hands scream for mercy, but were ordered
to their feet and then shot down." This was not to say that Forrest him-
self had not done all he could, first to prevent and then to end the un-
necessary bloodshed. He had, and perhaps the strongest evidence of his
forbearance came not from his friends but from his enemies of the
highest rank. Within three days of the fall of the fort, when news of
the "massacre" reached Washington, Lincoln told Stanton to investigate
without delay "the alleged butchery of our troops." Stanton passed the
word to Grant, who wired Sherman that same day: "If our men have
been murdered after capture, retaliation must be resorted to promptly."
Sherman undertook the investigation, as ordered, but made no such
recommendation: proof in itself that none was justified, since no one
doubted that otherwise, with Sherman in charge, retaliation would have
been as prompt as even Grant could have desired.
As for Forrest, his mind was soon on other things, including the
removal of his spoils and a stepped-up enforcement of the conscription
laws throughout West Tennessee. His recruiting methods were as
rigorous as they were thorough. "Sweep the country, bringing in every
man between the ages of eighteen and forty-five," he told his agents.
"Take no excuse, neither allow conscripts to go home for clothes or
anything else; their friends can send them." Haste was required, for
before he got back to Jackson, two days after Pillow fell, he received
a dispatch from Polk directing him to return promptly to Okolona,
where his two divisions would combine with those under Major General
Stephen D. Lee, Polk's chief of cavalry in the Department of Mississippi,
Alabama, and East Louisiana, to meet an anticipated raid-in-force from
Middle Tennessee, southward through Decatur, Alabama. Forrest replied
that the order would of course be complied with, though in his opinion
"no such raid will be made from Decatur or any point west of there."
Events were to prove him right in this, but even if such a raid had been
intended he believed that the best way to turn it back was by striking
deep in its rear. He still had his eye on Sherman's life line. He wanted to
hit it, and he wanted to hit it hard. This time, however, he presented his
views not only to Polk and Johnston, who seemed unwilling or unable
to act on them, but also to Jefferson Davis, addressing him directly.
Stephen Lee had about 7000 cavalry, and he himself was approaching
that strength by now. "With our forces united," he wrote Davis on
April 15, "a move could be made into Middle Tennessee and Kentucky
which would create a diversion of the enemy's forces and enable us to
break up his plans." It was Sherman he meant — specifically, the long
rail supply line reaching down from Louisville on the Ohio, through
Nashville on the Cumberland, to Chattanooga on the Tennessee. That
was a lot of track, and Forrest had long since shown what he could do
Another Grand Design [113]
to a railroad when he turned his troopers loose on one in earnest. More-
over, he assured the Commander in Chief lest the plan be considered
an impractical hare-brained escapade like the one on which John Morgan
had come to grief last summer, "such an expedition, managed with
prudence and executed with rapidity, can be safely made."
Whatever merit there was in the proposal, for the present at least
the authorities in Richmond were more interested in a project closer
at hand, involving an attempt to recover the North Carolina coastal
region, which got under way in earnest that same week, two days after
Forrest wrote his letter. A Tarheel brigade under a native North Caro-
linian, Brigadier General Robert Hoke, had been detached from the
Army of Northern Virginia to undertake the job in cooperation with an
ironclad ram that had been under construction for the past year in a
cornfield at Edwards Ferry, two thirds of the way up the Roanoke
River to Weldon. General Braxton Bragg, assigned as the President's
chief military adviser after his removal from command of the Army of
Tennessee, had conceived the plan, secured the troops, and worked out
the details, beginning with an amphibious assault on Plymouth at the
point where the Roanoke flowed into Albemarle Sound. Occupied for
more than two years by the Federals, who had fortified it stoutly, the
town would have to be attacked by water as well as by land, since other-
wise the heavy guns of the Union fleet, on station in support of the
place, would drive the attackers out about as soon as they got in. Bragg
had much confidence in Hoke, who was given large discretion after a
detailed briefing on this opening phase of the campaign — a veteran,
though not yet twenty-seven, he had fought with distinction in all the
major eastern engagements from Big Bethel through Chancellorsville,
where he was severely wounded — as well as in the ironclad successor
to the Virginia and the Arkansas, both of glorious memory.
Christened Albemarle, she was launched from the riverside corn-
field in which she had been built, mostly by local carpenters and black-
smiths, and set off downstream on the day she was commissioned, April
17, en route to her maiden engagement. Sheathed in two layers of two-
inch iron and mounting a pair of 6.4-inch Brooke rifles pivoted fore and
aft to fire through alternate portholes, she was just over 150 feet in
length, 34 feet in the beam, and drew 9 feet of water. Because of the
numerous twists and turns in the river this far up — which, incidentally,
had served to protect her from interference by Federal gunboats during
her construction — she set out stern-foremost, dragging a heavy chain
from her bow to steer by. Fitters were still at work on her armor and
machinery, and portable forges were brought along for emergency re-
pairs. They soon were needed, first when the main driveshaft wrenched
loose from its coupling, late that night, and next when the rudderhead
broke off, early the following morning. Three miles from Plymouth
[ 1 14 ] THE CIVIL WAR^r 1864
the second night, and ten hours behind schedule because of time-out for
repairs, she was stopped by reports that the river ahead was obstructed
by hulks which the enemy, hearing rumors that the Albemarle was ap-
proaching completion, had sunk in the channel to tear out her bottom
in case she ventured down. Aboard as a volunteer aide to her skipper,
Commander James W. Cooke — another Tarheel and a veteran of more
than thirty years in the old navy — was her builder, Gilbert Elliott, a
native of nearby Elizabeth City, where he had learned his craft in his
grandfather's shipyard. Elliott set out in the darkness in a small boat
with a pilot and two men, taking a long pole for soundings, and pres-
ently returned to report that, thanks to the unusually high stage of the
river this spring, "it was practicable to pass the obstructions provided
the boat was kept in the middle of the stream."
Cooke by then had turned the ram around and cleared for action.
He had no contact with Hoke ashore, but on being informed that a
sporadic attack had been in progress against Plymouth most of the day
and up until 9 o'clock that night, when the skirmishers withdrew —
presumably because of the nonarrival of the Albemarle, without whose
help the town could not be held under the frown of a quartet of gun-
boats just inside the mouth of the river — he weighed anchor and stood
down to engage. It was close to 4 o'clock in the morning, April 19, when
he passed safely over the sunken hulks, taking a few harmless heavy-
caliber shots from the fort as he went by, and came in sight of the four
Union warships. Warned of his approach, they were prepared to receive
him. The two largest, Miami and Southfield — big, double-ended side-
wheel steamers of a novel design, with rudders fore and aft for quick
reversals — were lashed together, but not too tightly, in accordance with
a plan to catch the Albemarle between them, thus making her useless as
a ram, while they tossed explosives down her stack. Cooke avoided this
by steering close to the south bank, then turning hard aport as he drew
nearly abreast of the shackled gunboats, presenting his long, tapered
bow to the nearer of the two. Both opened on him with solids at close
range, bringing as many of their dozen guns into play as could be
brought to bear, but with no more effect than if the shots had been tennis
balls, except that they left spoon-shaped dents in the armor when they
bounced. Closing fast, with the force of the current added to her thrust,
the ironclad put her snout ten feet into South-field's flank, penetrating all
the way to her fireroom, but then had trouble withdrawing it from
so deep a wound. The two hung joined, the ram taking water into her
forward port because of the weight of the rapidly sinking gunboat:
seeing which, the captain of the Miami ran to one of his 9-inch Dahl-
grens, depressed it quickly, and fired three explosive shells pointblank
at the rebel monster. All three shattered against the iron casement, a
scant twenty feet away. Pieces of the third, which was fired with a
Another Grand Design [115]
short fuse, flew back from the target and knocked down most of the
gun crew, including the captain, who lay dead with the jagged fragments
stuck deep in his chest and face.
Albemarle's captain was backing his engines hard to free the ram
of the weight on her bow, but by the time he managed to do so, the
Miami — called the "Miasma" by her crew, who had found duty aboard
her boring up to now — cut loose from the sinking South-field and ran
with all her speed for open water. Followed out into Albemarle Sound
by the other two gunboats, which had observed the action at long range,
she wanted no more of a fight with an adversary impervious to shot and
shell alike. Cooke attempted a brief pursuit, then broke off when he saw
that it was fruitless, mainly because his engines were getting almost no
draft through his badly shot-up smokestack, and turned back to give
his full attention to the fort. Now it was the Federals' turn to learn
what it was like to try to hold the place while under attack from the
river as well as the land.
They found it hard indeed. Delaying only long enough to patch
up his riddled stack and get in touch with the Confederates ashore,
Cooke steamed back past Plymouth that afternoon and opened on the
fort in conjunction with Hoke, whose batteries were skillfully disposed
for converging fire and whose infantry returned to within small-arms
range of the Federal ramparts. The result was altogether harrowing
for the defenders, caught thus as it were between the devil and the deep
blue sea, the landward attackers and the Albemarle, both of which kept
up the pressure until well after sunset and resumed it at daylight with
even greater fury. "This terrible fire had to be endured without reply,
as no man could live at the guns," the fort's commander was to report.
"The breast-height was struck by solid shot on every side, fragments of
shell sought almost every interior angle of the work, the whole extent
of the parapet was swept by musketry, and men were killed and
wounded even on the banquette slope. . . . This condition of affairs could
not be long endured without a reckless sacrifice of life; no relief could
be expected, and in compliance with the earnest desire of every officer I
consented to hoist a white flag, and at 10 a.m. of April 20 I had the
mortification of surrendering my post to the enemy with all it con-
tained." This included 2834 soldiers, thirty guns, and a large haul of
supplies, all secured at a cost to the attackers of less than 300 casualties,
only one of whom was naval, a seaman hit by a pistol ball while the
Albemarle had her snout in the sinking South field. "Heaven has crowned
our efforts with success," a presidential aide-observer wired Davis, who
replied directly to Hoke: "Accept my thanks and congratulations for
the brilliant success which has attended your attack and capture of
Plymouth. You are promoted to be a major general from that date."
Young Hoke was the hero of the hour, together with Cooke and
[ n6] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
the Albemarle, all down the- eastern seaboard, and Bragg — though his
basic planning went unnoticed amid the general praise for Hoke and
Cooke — was hard at work, now that the ram had reversed the naval
advantage, projecting exploits of a similar nature for the immediate
future.
It was this the Federals feared. Unable to get an ironclad through
any of the shallow inlets into Pamlico Sound, and with no time left in
which to build one there, they saw no way to stop the apparently in-
vulnerable, new-hatched monster before it returned the whole region
to Confederate control. "The ram will probably come down to Roanoke
Island, Washington, and New Bern," the district commander, Major
General John J. Peck, informed his department chief, Ben Butler, on
the day Plymouth fell. "Unless we are immediately and heavily rein-
forced, both by the army and navy, North Carolina is inevitably lost."
Butler shared the alarm, although belatedly. Two months earlier, when
the navy had asked him to send troops up the Roanoke to destroy the
rebel vessel on its stocks, he had replied: "I don't believe in the ironclad,"
and even now, in passing on to Halleck the news that the fort had been
reduced in part by the guns of the nonexistent warship, he declined to
accept a fraction of the blame, which he declared was all the navy's for
having left the garrison's water flank exposed. "Perhaps this is intended
as a diversion," he ended blandly. "Any instructions?"
In point of fact, New Bern was next on the Albemarle's list, once
she finished off the gunboats skittishly awaiting her emergence into the
Sound from which she took her name, and Hoke was told to prepare
for this, rather than for an early return to the Army of Northern Vir-
ginia, despite that army's commander's pleas that he and his brigade were
needed to help meet the attack that was soon to be launched across the
Rapidan. Whatever disappointment this might involve for Lee, out-
numbered two to one by the bluecoats on the north side of the river,
Plymouth made a fine addition to the list of late winter and early spring
victories which the President was compiling for inclusion in the message
he was preparing for delivery to Congress when it convened next week
in Richmond.
"Recent events of the war are highly creditable to our troops," he
wrote, "exhibiting energy and vigilance combined with the habitual
gallantry which they have taught us to expect on all occasions. We have
been cheered by important and valuable successes in Florida, northern
Mississippi, western Tennessee and Kentucky, western Louisiana, and
eastern North Carolina, reflecting the highest honor on the skill and
conduct of our commanders and on the incomparable soldiers whom it
is their privilege to lead. . . . The armies in northern Georgia and in
northern Virginia," he added, by way of compensation for the fact that
there had been no such recent, gloom-dispelling triumphs in either of
those regions, "still oppose with unshaken front a formidable barrier to
Another Grand Design [117]
the progress of the invader, and our generals, armies, and people are
animated by cheerful confidence."
So he would say, and so Congress would be pleased to hear. But
there were things he left unmentioned because to air them — involving,
as they did, plans untried and expectations unfulfilled — would serve
to deepen, rather than relieve, the nation's gloom regarding one of the
two main armies on which it depended for survival. Davis's disappoint-
ment was not in Lee, who was fairly immobilized by the fact that a
solid third of the Army of Northern Virginia had been detached for the
past seven months; it was in Johnston, who had been given command of
the Army of Tennessee with the understanding, at least on the part of
the Richmond authorities, that he would go over to the offensive in an
attempt to recover East and Middle Tennessee, lost by his predecessor
in the course of the bloody, erratic, year-long retreat from Murfreesboro
to Dalton. "You are desired to have all things in readiness at the earliest
practicable moment for the movement indicated," the transplanted
Virginian was reminded in early March. "The season is at hand and
the time seems propitious."
Plans for such an offensive were quite explicit. Union forces now
preparing at Chattanooga and Knoxville for a spring advance were de-
pendent on uninterrupted communication with Nashville; if this supply
line could be severed, both would be obliged to abandon what they
held, with much attendant disruption of their plans. In line with this,
Richmond's proposal was that Johnston be reinforced by Polk for a shift
northeast to Kingston, forty miles west of Knoxville, where he would
be joined by two divisions under Lieutenant General James Longstreet,
detached from Lee and wintering near Greeneville, for an advance across
the Tennessee River with a combined strength of more than 70,000 men.
By such a move, the authorities assured him, "Knoxville [would be]
isolated and Chattanooga threatened, with barely a possibility for the
enemy to unite. Should he not then offer you battle outside of his en-
trenched lines, a rapid move across the mountains from Kingston to
Sparta (a very practicable and easy route) would place you with a
formidable army in a country full of resources, where it is supposed,
with a good supply of ammunition, you may be entirely self-sustaining,
and it is confidently believed that such a move would necessitate the
withdrawal of the enemy to the line of the Cumberland." Bragg was the
author of these suggestions, and he wrote from experience. In essence,
they called for a repetition of the movement he himself had made soon
after he assumed command of the army in the summer of 1862, whereby
the western seat of war was shifted, practically overnight and practically
without bloodshed, from Alississippi to North Georgia and from there
all the way north to Kentucky. The Federals then had been obliged to
give up, at least for a season, their designs on Chattanooga, and Bragg
[n8] THE CIVIL WAR3P"1864
was of the opinion that if Johnston would only profit by his example the
same results could be obtained in regard to their designs on Atlanta —
provided, of course, that he advanced before his adversaries did. "To
accomplish this," he was re-minded in mid-March, "it is proposed that
you move as soon as your means and force can be collected."
Johnston had many objections to the plan. Time had probably
run out; he lacked supplies, as well as the mules and wagons needed to
haul them; the Federals, in greatly superior numbers, would combine
and jump him as soon as he got started, obliging him to fight at a dis-
advantage and with nothing to do, in case of defeat, but scatter his
troops in the mountains. What he preferred, he told Bragg on March 1 8,
was to stand where he was, letting the bluecoats crack their skulls against
his works, then follow them up when they retreated. Meantime, he
urged, the proffered reinforcements under Longstreet should be sent
to him at Dalton for a share in the defensive battle, rather than have
them wait in idleness to join him on the march. Bragg's reply, three days
later, was curt and stiff: "Your dispatch . . . does not indicate an accept-
ance of the plan proposed. The troops can only be drawn from other
points for an advance. Upon your decision of that point further action
must depend." Alarmed at this evidence that he would not be rein-
forced on his own terms, Johnston was quick to assert that he had been
misunderstood. "I expressly accept taking offensive," he wired back.
"Only differ with you as to details. I assume that the enemy will be
prepared for an advance before we are and will make it to our advantage.
Therefore, I propose as necessary both for offensive and defensive to
assemble our troops here immediately. Other preparations for advance
are going on."
For two weeks there was no reply to this. The answer, when it
came on April 7, was in a dispatch addressed not to Johnston but to
Longstreet, who was told to prepare his two divisions for an immediate
return to Virginia. Johnston was depressed by this lack of confidence,
and outraged by reports that he had declined to move against the
enemy. "I learn that it is given out," he wrote to a senator friend whose
son was on his staff, "that it has been proposed to me to take the
offensive with a large army & that I refused. Don't believe any such
story." Besides, he said, after outlining his objections to the plan he
had rejected, Lee's army, not his, was the one that should have been
ordered to advance. "It would have been much easier to take the
offensive (excuse such frequent use of that expression) in Va. than here,"
he wrote, basing his statement on the erroneous double claim that
Lee's army was not only larger than his but also had a smaller blue
army to its front. However, he was not greatly surprised at the way
things had gone. The authorities in Richmond — Davis himself, Secre-
tary of War James A. Seddon, and now Bragg, his erstwhile friend —
had about as low an opinion of him, apparently, as he had of them;
Another Grand Design [119]
which was low indeed. His consolation was in his men. "If this army
thought of me and felt toward me as some of our high civil functionaries
do," he closed his letter, "it would be necessary for me to leave the mili-
tary service. But thank heaven, it is my true friend."
It was true the army was his friend; no general on either side, not
even R. E. Lee or George McClellan, had more affection from the
soldiers he commanded. "He was loved, respected, admired; yea, almost
worshipped by his troops," a Tennessee veteran was to say. Richmond
had taken this quality into account in sending him to Dalton to repair the
shattered morale of an army which had recently been thrown off
Missionary Ridge and chased southward into Georgia by the opponent
it faced there now. And in this he had succeeded. "He restored the
soldier's pride; he brought the manhood back to the private's bosom,"
the same veteran declared. The drawback, according to those who had
advised against his appointment, was that he was too defensive-minded
for the tactical part of his assignment. He had only assumed the offen-
sive once in the whole course of the war, and that had been at Seven
Pines, which might well seem to him the exception that proved the un-
wisdom of attacking, since all it had got him was the wound that had
cost him the command he most preferred, now held by Lee, and a
subsequent transfer to the less congenial West. Those who had opposed
his appointment in December, on grounds that he would never go for-
ward as intended, were quick to point out now in April that their
prediction had been fulfilled. In fact, they said, if he continued to fol-
low his accustomed pattern of behavior, he would be likely to fall
back from Dalton at the first bristly gesture by the Federals in his
front. Davis and Seddon, who had favored his appointment — pri-
marily, it was true, because no one could think of another candidate for
the job — were obliged to admit the strength of this, as evidence of
what to expect, and so was Bragg after his exchanges with the general,
by letter and wire, throughout the latter part of February and the first
two thirds of March. It was then, on the heels of this admission by
Davis and Seddon and Bragg, that the summons went to Longstreet for
a quick return to Lee. They had given up on Johnston, who would
neither go forward nor refuse to go forward, and who they knew from
past experience (in northern Virginia, down on the York-James penin-
sula, outside beleaguered Vicksburg, and back in the piny woods of
Mississippi) would wind up doing exactly as he pleased in any case.
He always had. He always would. The only decision left was whether
to keep him — and the fact was, they had no one to put in his place.
So they kept him. And in keeping him, however regretfully, they com-
mitted the Army of Tennessee to the defensive and gave up all hope for
a slash at the Union center as a means of disrupting at the outset the
latest Grand Design for their subjugation.
Lee was committed to the defensive, too, though not by inclina-
[i2o] THE CIVIL WARW1864
tion or from choice. "At present my hands are tied," he confessed in a
mid- April letter to Bragg. "If I was able to move . . . the enemy might
be driven from the Rappahannock and obliged to look to the safety
of his own capital instead of the assault upon ours." As it was, he added,
writing from the stripped region about Orange where his infantry
was camped, "I cannot even draw to me the cavalry or artillery of the
army, and the season has arrived when I may be attacked any day."
It was a question of subsistence for mounts and men. Scarcely a
tree in the district wore its bark below the point to which a horse could
lift its mouth, and few of the few animals on hand were fit for rigorous
service; "Fully one half of them were incapable of getting up a gallop,"
a cavalry officer complained, "a trembling trot being their fastest
gait." Conditions were nearly as bad for the leaned-down soldiers.
Though Davis himself had managed to get hold of 90,000 pounds of
meat for shipment to the Rapidan during a critical, near-starvation
period that winter, this did not go far with troops whose usual daily
ration comprised four ounces of bacon or salt pork, often rancid, and a
scant pint of rough-ground corn meal. Sprouting grass was a help to
the horses this rainy April, but hunger was still a condition of existence
for the men. This pained Lee, who did not like to add to other people's
troubles by recounting his own, into making a formal complaint to the
President, coupled with the strongest warning he had given at any
time in the twenty-two months since he assumed command: "My
anxiety on the subject of provisions for the army is so great that I can-
not refrain from expressing it to Your Excellency. I cannot see how
we can operate with our present supplies. Any derangement in their
arrival or disaster to the railroad would render it impossible for me to
keep the army together, and might force a retreat into North Carolina."
That too was in mid-April — April 1 2 — one week after he had
alerted the army to prepare for a Union crossing, any day now, of the
river to its front. On that same April 5, having pored over information
received from scouts, northern papers, and citizens beyond the Rapidan,
he gave Davis his estimate of the situation. "The movements and reports
of the enemy may be intended to mislead us, and should therefore be
carefully observed," he wrote. "But all the information that reaches me
goes to strengthen the belief that Genl Grant is preparing to move
against Richmond." This was as far as he went at the time; he said
nothing of his new opponent's probable route (or routes) or schedule.
Three days later, however, he wrote of receiving two more reports
from reliable scouts, in which "the general impression was that the
great battle would take place on the Rapidan, and that the Federal
army would advance as soon as the weather is settled." Continuing to
study all the evidence he could gather — including much, of course,
that was false or merely worthless — he arrived within another week at
a considerably more detailed estimate, and he passed this too along to
Another Grand Design [ 121 ]
Davis, saying: "We shall have to glean troops from every quarter to
oppose the apparent combination of the enemy."
He expected three attacks, all to be delivered simultaneously from
three directions: 1) a main assault across the Rapidan, more or less
against his front, 2) a diversionary advance up the Shenandoah Valley,
off his western flank, and 3) a rear attack, up the James, to menace
Richmond from the east and south. To meet this last, he proposed that
General P. G. T. Beauregard be shifted from his present command at
Charleston, which Lee believed was no longer on the list of Union ob-
jectives, and brought to Petersburg or Weldon to take charge of the
defense of southside Richmond. The Valley threat he would leave for
the time being to A4ajor General John C. Breckinridge, who had a small
command in the Department of Southwest Virginia. As for the main
effort, the blue lunge across the Rapidan, he kept that as the continuing
exclusive concern of the Army of Northern Virginia. Recent news
that Longstreet would soon be coming back with two of his three
divisions, after seven months in Georgia and Tennessee, made Lee
yearn for a return to the old days and the old method of dealing with
such a threat as he faced now. "If Richmond could be held secure against
the attack from the east," he told the President on April 15, "I would
propose that I draw Longstreet to me and move right against the enemy
on the Rappahannock. Should God give us a crowning victory there,
all their plans would be dissipated, and their troops now collecting on
the waters of the Chesapeake would be recalled to the defense of
Washington." Having said as much, however, he returned to such
realities as the scarcity of food for his men and horses, then closed on
a note of ominous regret: "But to make this move I must have provi-
sions and forage. I am not yet able to call to me the cavalry or artillery.
If I am obliged to retire from this line, either by a flank movement of
the enemy or the want of supplies, great injury will befall us."
On April 18 he ordered all surplus baggage sent to the rear, a
sort of ultimate alert well understood by the troops to mean that fighting
might begin at any time. Still Grant did not move. Lee's impatience
mounted during the following week — in the course of which Breckin-
ridge was warned to brace for action in the Valley and Beauregard, in
compliance with orders from Richmond, reached Weldon to assume
command of the region between the James and Cape Fear rivers —
though he acknowledged that the gain was worth the strain, if only
because the half-starved horses thus were allowed more time to graze
in peace on the new-sprung grass. "The advance of the Army of the
Potomac seems to be delayed for some reason," he wrote Davis on
April 25. "It appears to be prepared for movement, but is probably
waiting for its cooperative columns." He closed with an invitation for
the President to visit the army, "if the enemy remains quiet and the
weather favorable," by way of affording himself a diversion from the
[ 122 ] THE CIVIL WAR3B-1864
daily grind in Richmond. Davis declined, under pressure of business;
Congress would convene next week, for one thing. But four days later
Lee enjoyed a diversion of his own.
Longstreet's two divisions had arrived at last from Tennessee and
were in camp around Gordonsville, nine miles south of army head-
quarters at Orange. Lee did not know whether Meade would cross
the Rapidan on his left or right, taking John Pope's intended route down
the Orange & Alexandria Railroad or Joe Hooker's through the Wilder-
ness. He rather thought (and certainly hoped) it would be the latter,
but since he lacked solid evidence to that effect he kept Longstreet's
hard-hitting veterans off to his left rear, in case the bluecoats came that
way. On April 29 he rode down to review them for the first time in
nearly eight months, which was how long it had been since they left
the Old Dominion to supply Bragg's Sunday punch at Chickamauga.
They were turned out in their ragged best, leather patched, metal
polished, their shot-torn regimental colors newly stitched with the
names of unfamiliar western battles, and when Lee drew rein before
them, removing his hat in salute, the color bearers shook their flags like
mad and the troops responded with an all-out rebel yell that reverber-
ated from all the surrounding hills, causing the gray-haired general's
eyes to brim with tears. "The effect was as of a military sacrament," an
artillerist later wrote. Lee wept, another veteran explained, because "he
felt that we were again to do his bidding." Deep Southerners or
Westerners to a man — South Carolinians and Georgians, Alabamians
and Mississippians, Arkansans and Texans — there was not a Virginian
among them, and yet it was as if they had come home. A First Corps
chaplain riding with the staff turned to a colonel as the yell went up
and Lee sat there astride his gray horse Traveller, uncovered in salute,
and asked: "Does it not make the general proud to see how these men
love him?" The colonel shook his head. "Not proud," he said. "It awes
him."
Awed or proud — no doubt with something of both, despite the
staffer's protest — Lee felt his impatience mount still faster next day,
back at Orange, when he got word that a four-division corps under
Ambrose Burnside, formerly encamped at Annapolis and thought to be
intended for service down the coast, had passed through Centerville two
days ago and had by now reached Rappahannock Station, from which
position it could move in direct support of the Army of the Potomac.
Perhaps it was for this that Grant had been waiting to put his three-
pronged war machine in motion. As for Meade, Lee informed Davis
on this final day in April, "Our scouts report that the engineer troops,
pontoon trains, and all the cavalry of Meade's army have been advanced
south of the Rappahannock. . . . Everything indicates a concentrated
attack on this front." His faith was in God and in the "incomparable
infantry" of the Army of Northern Virginia, but now as he awaited
Another Grand Design [ 123 ]
the onslaught of the blue juggernaut whose numbers were roughly twice
his own, he displayed more urgency of manner than those closest to
him had ever seen him show on his own ground. Evidence of an early
assault continued to accumulate, and still the Federal tents remained un-
struck beyond the Rapidan. Lee's aggressive instinct, held in check by
hard necessity, broke its bounds at last. "Colonel," he told a member of
his staff, "we have got to whip them; we must whip them!" Apparently
that was the high point of his impatience, for having said as much he
paused, then added with a smile of amused relief: "It has already made
me better to think of it."
Lee's confidence was based on past performance, against odds as
long and sometimes longer, and Davis too drew reassurance from that
source, having just completed his third full year of playing Hezekiah
to Lincoln's Sennacherib. Whatever frets he had about developments
out in Georgia, here in the Old Dominion at least the Confederacy had
won for itself the military admiration of the world. Six blue comanders,
in all their majesty and might — Irvin McDowell and George Mc-
Clellan, John Pope and Ambrose Burnside, Joseph Hooker and George
Meade — had mounted half a dozen well-sustained offensives, each
designed to achieve the reduction of Richmond in short order, and all
six had been turned back in various states of disarray. Now there was
Grant, who seemed to many only a seventh name to be added to the list
of discomfited eastern opponents. "If I mistake not," a young officer
on Lee's staff wrote home on hearing of the elevation of this latest
transfer from an inferior western school, "[Grant] will shortly come
to grief if he attempts to repeat the tactics in Virginia which proved
so successful in Mississippi." There were dissenters: Longstreet, for
example, who had been Grant's friend at the Academy and a grooms-
man at his wedding — and who had fought, moreover, in a theater where
Grant was in command. "We must make up our minds to get into line
of battle and to stay there," Old Peter had told his visitors at Gordons-
ville the day before, "for that man will fight us every day and every
hour till the end of the war." But for the most part there was general
agreement that what had been done six times before (four of them, and
the last four at that, more or less on this same Rapidan-Rappahannock
line) could be done again by Lee, whose army was a rapier in his hand.
If Grant was a fighter, as Longstreet said, there would be nothing un-
usual in that. One of the worst-defeated of the six had been known as
"Fighting Joe," and the one who had been given the soundest drubbing
of them all — the "miscreant" Pope — had also arrived with western
laurels on his brow and a reputation for coming to savage grips with
whatever tried to stand in his path of conquest.
Besides, what was called for now was not necessarily the outright
defeat or even repulse of the invaders, east or west. What was called for,
Davis could remind himself, was a six-month holding action which
Another Grand Design [ 125 ]
would allow them no appreciable gain except at a price that would be
regarded as prohibitive, in money and blood, by voters who would be
making their early-November choice between peace and war. In light of
this, a head-down fighter like Grant might serve the South's purpose far
better than would an over-all commander who was inclined to count
his casualties and take counsel of his fears. Not that Davis abandoned
all hope for a repetition of what had happened in the past to opponents
who had come in roaring and gone out bleating; he hoped for it pro-
foundly, and not without cause. Don Carlos Buell and William S.
Rosecrans were western examples to match the six discomfited in Vir-
ginia, and Sherman had shown himself to have many of the qualities that
made Grant an ideal opponent at this juncture. In some ways, now that
the notion of an offensive against the Union center had been abandoned
as a gambit, Joe Johnston seemed an excellent choice as a foil for the
red-haired Ohioan, whose impulsiveness might expose him to the kind
of damage his government could least afford on the eve of its quad-
rennial election. By way of further encouragement, Davis had only to
consider more recent successes, scored east and west by Kirby Smith,
Finegan, Forrest, and Hoke, for proof that the South could still stand
up to combinations designed for its destruction, and could also carry
the war to the enemy when the opportunity came. Just as Banks and
Steele had been driven back across the Atchafalaya and the Saline —
not only against the numerical odds, but also, as it were, against the
tactics manuals — so might Sherman and Grant be driven back across
the Tennessee and the Rappahannock. Like many brave men, before and
since, Davis had found that when a difficulty amounted to an impos-
sibility, the best course to pursue was one that did not take the impossibility
into account. That was what he had meant all along when he said, "I
cultivate hope and patience, and trust to the blunders of our enemy
and the gallantry of our troops for ultimate success."
For the most part this attitude was shared by the people of Rich-
mond. In fact, among the party-goers and the well-to-do — they had to
be that; a dollar in gold was worth more than thirty in Confederate
paper, while calico and coffee were $10 a yard and pound, eggs $2
a dozen, and cornfield beans were selling at $60 a bushel — there had
never been a social season as lively as the one now drawing to a close.
"Starvation parties" were all the rage, along with charades and taffy pulls,
although they seemed to one diarist to have a quality of despera-
tion about them, as if the guests were aware that these revels, honoring
"Major This, or Colonel That, or Captain T'other," would be the last.
In February Lincoln had issued a draft call for 500,000 men — more than
the Confederacy could muster in all its camps between the Rappahan-
nock and the Rio Grande — and then in March had upped the ante by
calling for "200,000 more." All the South could do, by way of response,
was lower and raise the conscription age limits to seventeen and fifty,
[ iz6] THE CIVIL WAR35T 1864
robbing thus the cradle and the grave, as some complained, or as Davis
put it, in regard to the half-grown boys about to be drafted and thrown
into the line, "grinding the seed corn of the nation." Meanwhile U. S.
Grant, "a bull-headed Suvarov," was poised on the semicircular horizon,
about to lurch into motion from three directions, and in Richmond,
his known goal, the revelry continued. "There seems to be for the first
time," the diarist noted, "a resolute determination to enjoy the brief
hour, and never look beyond the day."
Elsewhere about the country it was apparently much the same;
a young man just back from Mobile reported that he had attended
sixteen weddings and twenty-seven teas within the brief span of his
visit. He did not add that he had found the gayety forced in that di-
rection, but to a Richmond belle, looking back a decade later on this
fourth and liveliest of the capital's wartime springs, the underlying
sense of doom had been altogether inescapable. "In all our parties and
pleasurings," she would recall, "there seemed to lurk a foreshadowing,
as in the Greek plays where the gloomy end is ever kept in sight."
X 4 X
Grant was angered throughout April by increasingly glum reports of
developments out in the Transmississippi, which in effect snapped off
one prong of his spiky offensive before it could even be launched.
"Banks, by his failure," he complained to Halleck, "has absorbed 10,000
veteran troops that should now be with Sherman, and 30,000 of his
own that should have been moving toward Mobile; and this without
accomplishing any good result." Nor was that the worst of it. Even
more exasperating, from a somewhat different point of view, was the
knowledge that Johnston now would not only have no worries about
his rear and his supply lines to the Gulf, but would also be able to sum-
mon to the defense of North Georgia reinforcements who otherwise
would have been occupied with the defense of South Alabama. Banks
and Steele, as co-directors of the Louisiana-Arkansas fiasco, had dis-
arranged the Grand Design at the outset; or as a friend of Grant's, after
repeating his complaint that "30,000 men were rendered useless during
six of the most important months of the military year," was to put it in
a later appraisal of the situation, "The great combination of campaigns was
inaugurated with disaster."
By way of insuring against such blunders here in the East, Grant
contented himself with sending explicit and detailed instructions to
Franz Sigel, who had received a military education in his native Ger-
many, regarding the projected movement up the Shenandoah Valley
and down the Virginia Central Railroad. But he went in person, soon
after his return from Tennessee, to confer with the altogether nonpro-
Another Grand Design [ 127 ]
fessional Ben Butler, whom he had never met and with whom he had
had no correspondence as to his share in the three-pronged convergence
on Lee and Richmond. Arriving on April 1 at Fortress Monroe, the
Massachusetts general's headquarters at the tip of the York-James
peninsula, he decided that a good way to size up the former Bay State
politician would be to invite his views on the part he thought he ought
to play in the campaign scheduled to open within four weeks. Butler
promptly gave them, and Grant was pleased, as he said later, to find
that "they were very much such as I intended to direct"; that is, an
amphibious movement up James River for a landing at City Point, eight
miles northeast of Petersburg, the hub of Virginia's life-sustaining rail
connections with the Carolinas and Georgia, and a fast northward
march of twenty miles for a knock at the back door of the Confederate
capital while Meade, so to speak, was climbing the front steps and
Sigel was coming in through the side yard. This augured well. Still,
gratifying as it was to find his military judgment confirmed in advance
by the man who was charged with carrying out this portion of the
plan it had produced, Grant did not neglect to give Butler, before he
got back aboard the boat next morning for the return up Chesapeake
Bay, written instructions as to what would be expected of him when
jump-off time came round. "When you are notified to move," he told
him, "take City Point with as much force as possible. Fortify, or rather
intrench, at once, and concentrate all your troops for the field there as
rapidly as you can." He added that, though "from City Point direc-
tions cannot be given at this time for your future movements," Butler
was to bear in mind "that Richmond is to be your objective point, and
that there is to be cooperation between your force and the Army of the
Potomac."
The latter, being charged with the main effort, was of course
Grant's main concern, and when he returned to Culpeper next day he
found it in the throes of an unwelcome top-to-bottom reorganization.
Designed to achieve the double purpose of tightening the chain of com-
mand and of weeding out certain generals who had proved themselves
incompetent or unlucky, the shakeup involved the consolidation of a
number of large units. Indeed, there was no unit above the size of a
brigade that was unaffected by the change. Two of the five corps were
broken up and distributed among the remaining three, while the same
was done with four of the fifteen infantry divisions, leaving eleven. The
result was painful to men in outfits which thus were abolished or in
any case lost their identity in the shuffle. Cast among strangers they felt
rejected, disowned, orphaned. They felt resentful at having been can-
nibalized, stung in their unit pride that theirs had been the organizations
selected for such a fate, and they voiced their resentment to all who
would listen. "The enemies of our country have, in times past, assailed
[this division] in vain," one dispossessed commander protested, "and
[ i28] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
now it dissolves by action of our own friends." Although the recom-
mendation had been made by Meade before Grant left Tennessee, the
soldiers put the blame on the new general-in-chief, since the order of
approval came down from Washington just two weeks after his arrival.
By way of registering their complaint, at the first large-scale review
Grant held after his return from Fortress Monroe in early April the
men of one absorbed outfit wore their old corps badge on the crown
of their caps, as usual, and — as he could see as soon as they swung
past him — pinned the new one to the seat of their trousers.
He took no apparent offense at this, having other, more pressing
matters on his mind. One was numbers. However well the chain of
command was tightened, however ruthlessly high-ranking incompetents
were purged, the army would be able to do little effective fighting,
especially of the steam-roller kind Grant favored, unless its ranks were
full and reserves were ample. And there was the rub. As spring ad-
vanced, the army moved closer to the time when it might lose the very
cream of its membership, the men who had come forward on hearing
that Sumter had been fired on, back in the pre-draft spring of 1861,
and had learned since then, in what Sherman termed "the dearest school
on earth," what it meant and what it took to be a soldier. Such veterans,
survivors of many a hard-fought field, were scarcely replaceable. They
were in fact not only the backbone, they were the body of the army,
constituting roughly half the total combat force. Now their three-year
enlistments were about to expire, and if they did not reenlist the army
was apt to melt away, like the snow on the crest of the Blue Ridge, along
with the volunteer organizations whose rolls they filled. Nor was this
true only of the Army of the Potomac. Of the 956 volunteer infantry
regiments in all the armies of the Union, 455 — nearly half — were
scheduled to leave the service before the end of summer, while of the
158 volunteer batteries of artillery, 81 — more than half — would pres-
ently be free to head for home: unless, that is, enough of their members
reenlisted to justify continuing their existence. By way of encouraging
such commitments, the government offered certain inducements de-
signed to make a combined appeal to greed and pride. These included,
in the former category, a $400 bounty (to be increased by the amount
his home town and county, or rather the civilians who had remained
there for whatever reasons, were willing to put up) and a thirty-day
furlough. As for pride, a man who reenlisted was to be classified as a
"volunteer veteran" and was authorized to wear on his sleeve a special
identifying chevron, a certificate of undeniable cold-blood valor. To
these was added, as an appeal to unit pride, the guarantee that any
regiment in which as many as three fourths of the troops "shipped over"
would retain its numerical designation and its organizational status.
This last was perhaps the most effective of the lot: especially when
regimental commanders, anxious to hold their outfits together as a
Another Grand Design [ 129 ]
prerequisite for holding onto their rank, carried the process down to the
company level, where a man's deepest loyalties lay. Any company that
attained its quota was encouraged to parade through the regimental
camps, fifes shrieking and drums throbbing, while onlookers cheered
and tossed their caps. Such enthusiasm was contagious, and the pressure
grew heavier on holdouts in ratio to the nearness of the goal, until at
last reluctance amounted to disloyalty, not only to comrades already
committed, who stood in danger of being scattered among strangers, but
also to the regiment, which would die a shameful death without its
quota of reenlisted volunteers. "So you see I am sold again," one such
wrote home, explaining that he had been swept off his feet by a fervor
as strong as the spirit that makes a man be "born again" at a church
revival. Not that the bounty and the prospect of a trip home, sporting
the just-earned chevron, were not attractive. They were indeed, and
especially together; $400, a tempted veteran pointed out, "seemed to be
about the right amount for spending-money while on a furlough." Be-
sides, regional supplements often raised the sum to more than a thousand
dollars: a respectable nest tgg, and enough for the down payment on a
farm or a small business, once the fighting ended. Until then, after three
years of life in the service, home was likely to be no great fun anyhow,
except on a visit — and even that had its limitations, according to some
who had been there and found that it fell considerably short of their
expectations. "I almost wish myself back in the army," a furloughed
soldier, barely a week after his departure, wrote to a comrade still in
camp. "Everything seems to be so lonesome here. There is nothing
going on that is new." In any case, as a result of these several attractions
and persuasions, by mid- April no less that 136,000 veterans had signed
on for another three years or the duration of the war.
Most of these were in the West, where the troops expected an
early victory and were determined to be in on the kill; "fierce-fighting
western men," one of their generals called them, "in for work and in
for the war." In the Army of the Potomac the result was less spectacu-
lar; 26,767 veterans reenlisted — about half as many as signed up for
another three years under Sherman, and also about half as many as were
up for discharge. This meant that about the same number would soon
be going home, dropped as emphatically from the army roster as if
each man had stopped a rebel bullet. They would have to be replaced,
and mainly this would be done by the conscripts and substitutes who
now were arriving as a result of Lincoln's February call. Whatever they
meant to Grant and Meade, for whom they were merely numbers on a
fatted strength report, to the men they joined they were a mixed bless-
ing at best. At worst, they were considerably less. "Such another de-
praved, vice-hardened and desperate set of human beings never before
disgraced an army," an outraged New Englander complained. Partly
this was the result of rising wages, which made enlistment a greater
[ 130] THE CIVIL WAR3T1864
sacrifice than ever, and partly it was because the outsized bounties had
created a new breed of soldier: the bounty jumper. "Thieves, pick-
pockets, and vagabonds would enlist," a later observer remarked, "take
whatever bounty was paid in cash, desert when opportunity offered,
change their names, go to another district or state, reenlist, collect
another bounty, desert again, and go on playing the same trick until
they were caught." One nimble New Yorker confessed to having made
thirty-two such "jumps" before he wound up in the Albany peniten-
tiary, while another New England veteran recorded that no less than
half the recruits in his regiment received in one large draft had so
quickly forgotten their assumed names, on the trip down to the Rap-
pahannock, that they could not answer roll call when they got there.
What was more, the delivery system was far from efficient. Out of a
shipment of 625 recruits intended for a distinguished New Hampshire
regiment, 137 deserted en route and another 118 managed to do the
same within a week of their arrival — 36 to the rear, 82 into the Con-
federate lines — leaving a residue of 370, who were either the most
patriotic or else the least resourceful of the lot. Across the way, on the
south bank of the Rapidan, rebel pickets put up a placard: "Head-
quarters, 5th New Hampshire Volunteers. Recruits Wanted." In much
the same vein, they sent over a mock-formal message inquiring when
they could expect to receive the regimental colors.
Something else this latest influx of draftees brought into the
Rappahannock camps that was more disturbing than the rising desertion
rate. Though few in numbers, compared to the men already there,
the newcomers effected a disproportionate influence on certain aspects
of soldier life. "They never tired of relating the mysterious uses to
which a 'jimmy' could be put by a man of nerve," a startled veteran
would recall, "and how easy it was to crack a bank or filch a purse."
Such talents did not go unexercised, so far at least as the limited field
allowed; nothing anyone owned was safe that was not nailed down,
and there were more ways than one to skin a cat or fleece a sheep.
With all that crisp new bounty money injected into the economy,
gambling increased hugely and so did the stakes. According to one
awed observer, "Thousands of dollars would change hands in one day's
playing, and there were many ugly fights engaged in, caused by their
cheating each other at cards." Outraged by what he called "this business
of filling up a decent regiment with the outscourings of humanity,"
another veteran infantryman recorded that "the more we thought of it,
the more discontented we became. We longed for a quiet night, and
when day came we longed to be away from these ruffians." The result
was a necessary tightening of restrictions, in and out of drill hours and
applicable to all. That came hard. "No pleasure or privilege for the boys
in camp any more," a volunteer lamented, "for the hard lines and severe
military discipline apply with a rigidness never before applied." Old-
Another Grand Design [ 131 ]
timers yearned for a return to the easy-going life they once had
groused about, and they blamed its loss, illogically or not, on Grant,
whom they saw as a newcomer like all those unwelcome others, though
in fact the change had begun before he had any notion, let alone in-
tention, of coming east to assume command of all the armies.
More logically — quite accurately, in fact — they put the blame
on him for another change which was going to have an even more bale-
ful effect on the lives of thousands of men now in his charge. In mid-
April, in a further attempt to lengthen his numerical advantage over
the forces in rebellion, Grant put an official end to the three-year-old
practice of exchanging Federal and Confederate prisoners of war. What-
ever its shortcomings from a humanitarian point of view, militarily the
decision was a sound one. Not only did a man-for-man exchange favor
the side on which a man was a larger fraction of the whole, but in this
case there was also the added dividend that, in ending such a dis-
advantageous arrangement, the Union would be burdening its food-poor
adversary with a mounting number of hungry mouths to feed. Just how
much prolonged misery this was likely to cause, Grant's own troops
knew only too well, either from having been captured in the days when
they could be exchanged, or from awareness of what the daily food
allowance consisted in the camps across the river. It was hard enough
on the rebels, whose stomachs had long since shrunk to fit their rations,
but for men accustomed to eating all they could hold ("Our men are
generally overloaded, fed, and clad," their chief quartermaster was pro-
testing even now, "which detracts from their marching capacity and
induces straggling") such deprivation would amount to downright
torture. Moreover, the prospect was further clouded by the knowl-
edge that it had been devised by their own commander, the same man
they accused of having foisted the detested reorganization upon them,
as well as of having polluted their camps with rowdy gangs of thugs.
One further thing Grant did, however, that went far toward
making up for the unpopularity of those other changes that followed
hard on his arrival. This was to reach into the back areas of the war,
especially into the fortifications around the capital, and pluck thousands
of easy-living soldiers from their cushy jobs for reassignment to duty in
the field. Individually and in groups, stripped of their plumes and fire-
gilt buttons, they came down to the Rappahannock in a somewhat
bewildered condition, if not in a state of downright shock, and the
troops already there were glad to welcome them with cheers and jeers.
The warmest welcome went to regiments of heavy artillery, prised out
of their snug barracks, issued Springfields, and converted overnight
into congeries of unblooded rifle companies; "Heavy Infantry," the
veterans called them, or just "Heavies." The shocking thing about such
regiments, aside from their greenness, was their size. Popular with volun-
teers in search of easy duty and security from wounds, several of them
[132] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
had as many as 1800 men apiece. "What division is this?" a Massachu-
setts soldier asked when one of them marched in, his own regiment
being down to 207 effectives at the time. Other conversions were
applauded about as lustily. Parade-ground cavalry units, for example,
were suddenly unhorsed, handed muskets in place of carbines, and told
that they would henceforth go afoot. "Where are your horses?" a heavy
infantryman inquired of a dismounted cavalry outfit that came slogging
into camp soon after his own regiment arrived. "Gone to fetch your
heavy guns," one of the former troopers snapped. Teamsters too were
subject to such abrupt indignity, and many of them were similarly con-
verted and accoutered, as a result of an order reducing transportation
to one wagon per brigade. "You needn't laugh at me," a transmuted
teamster called to a braying mule in a passing train. "You may be in the
ranks yourself before Grant gets through with the army."
In point of fact, now that they had time to look him over and
examine the results of some of the changes he introduced, the men had
begun to see that, whatever else he might do, in or out of combat, he
clearly meant business, and they found they liked the notion of this.
Some high-ranking officers, particularly the starch-collared regulars
among them, might have doubts about the new general-in-chief (an
old-line colonel of artillery, for instance, wrote home that he found
him "stumpy, unmilitary, slouchy and western-looking; very ordinary,
in fact") but the troops themselves, according to an enlisted diarist,
would "look with awe at Grant's silent figure" whenever he rode out
on inspection, which was often. They liked his reticence, his disregard
of mere trappings, his eye for the essential. He was seldom cheered,
except by greenhorn outfits trying to make points, but he seemed not
to care or even notice. "Grant wants soldiers, not yawpers," a veteran
observed approvingly. What was more, his success in prising the heavies
out of the Washington fortifications was good evidence that he had the
confidence of the authorities there — something most of his predeces-
sors had lacked, to their discomfort and the resultant discomfort of the
army in their charge. This was seen as an excellent sign, as well as a
source of present satisfaction. There was also a solidity about him that
was welcome after service under a series of commanders who had shown
a tendency, and sometimes more than a tendency, to fly asunder under
pressure. A New Englander put it simplest: "We all felt at last that
the boss had arrived." Grant returned the compliment in kind. "The
Army of the Potomac is in splendid condition and evidently feels like
whipping somebody," he informed Halleck on April 26, one month after
establishing headquarters at Culpeper: adding, "I feel much better with
this command than I did before seeing it."
He had good cause to feel so, even though by now he was already
one day past the date he had set for the simultaneous jump-off, east and
west. Numerically, as a result of those various recruitment stratagems
Another Grand Design [ 133 ]
in the army and on the home front, he was in better shape than anyone
had dared to hope, particularly on the Rappahannock. After Burnside
shifted his corps into position for closeup support of Meade, Grant had
122,146 infantry, cavalry, and artillery effectives on hand for the main-
effort crossing of the Rapidan. This figure included only the troops
who were "present for duty, equipped"; another 24,602 were on extra
duty, sick, or in arrest, bringing the total to just under 147,000. Even
at the lower figure, and leaving Butler and Sigel out of account, he
had about twice as many effectives as Lee, who had 61,953 of all
arms. In Georgia, moreover, the ratio was roughly the same. Sherman
had 119,898, including men on reenlistment furloughs, while Johnston
had 63,949, including Polk, who would be free to join him once the
pressure was on and the Union strategy was disclosed. Just when that
would be, east and west, depended in part on the method by which
this pressure was to be applied; that is, on the tactical details of the
strategy Grant and Sherman had worked out between them, six weeks
ago, in the Cincinnati hotel room. Grant was willing to leave the work-
ing out of such details to his red-haired friend, as far as they were to be
applied in the West. In the East, however, he had made the matter his
prime concern ever since he had set up headquarters in the field.
From Culpeper, there in the toppled V of the rivers, and from
the peak of nearby Stony Mountain, where an observation post had been
established for surveillance of the landscape roundabout, he could give
the problem informed attention. South of the V, disposed on a front
of nearly twenty miles along the right bank of the river, from Mine
Run upstream to Rapidan Station and beyond, Lee and his army
lay in wait under cover of intrenchments they had spent the past six
months improving. The problem was how to get at him: or, more pre-
cisely, how to get around him and then at him, since a frontal assault,
across the river and against those earthworks, would amount to down-
right folly, if not suicide en masse. Once the blue army was on his
flank or in his rear, however, with nothing substantial between itself
and Richmond, Lee would be obliged to come out of his works for the
showdown battle Meade had been told to seek. This being so, the ques-
tion was reduced to whether to move around his right flank or his left,
east or west of that twenty-mile line of intrenchments. Much could be
said for the latter course. The country was more open in that direction,
affording the attackers plenty of room for bringing all of their superior
force to bear, and there was also the prospect of gobbling up what was
left of the Orange & Alexandria Railroad, down to Gordonsville, and
then moving onto the Virginia Central, converting them into a supply
line leading back to the Potomac, while denying their use to the de-
fenders. All this was good, so far as it went, but there were two con-
siderable drawbacks. One was that the rebels would wreck the railroad
as they withdrew, requiring the pursuers to rebuild it and then keep it
[134] THE CIVIL WAR3ri864
rebuilt despite attempts by regular and irregular grayback cavalry to
re-wreck it. To guard against this would require the crippling detach-
ment of fighting men from the front to the rear in ever-increasing
numbers, all the way back to the Rappahannock, since even a temporary
break might prove disastrous, dependent as the army would be on that
single line for everything it needed, including food for 56,500 horses
and mules and better than twice that many soldiers. The other drawback
was that a movement around Lee's west flank would uncover the direct
approach to Washington. In some ways this was a greater disadvantage
than the other; Lincoln was notoriously touchy in regard to the safety
of his capital, and every commander who had neglected to remember
this had found himself in trouble as a result. So far, since the advent
of the new general-in-chief, the President had maintained a hands-off
attitude toward all things military, for which Grant was altogether
thankful, but that attitude might not extend to the point of seeing
Washington endangered, even in theory, especially now that the sur-
rounding fortifications had been stripped of their outsized regiments.
Between them, these two drawbacks — one having to do with supply
difficulties, the other having to do with Lincoln — fairly well ruled
out a movement around the Confederate left. Grant shifted his at-
tention to the region beyond Lee's right: more specifically, to the
country between Mine Run and the confluence of the rivers, fifteen
miles east of Stony Mountain and about ten miles this side of Fredericks-
burg.
That way, the march would be shorter, Washington would be
covered from dead ahead, and the supply problem would be solved
by ready access to navigable streams on the outer flank, affording rapid,
all-weather connection with well-stocked depots in the rear and requir-
ing no more than minimal protection. Here too there was a drawback,
however, one that was personally familiar to every soldier who had
served for as long as half a year in the eastern theater. The Wilderness,
it was called: a forbidding region, some dozen miles wide and eight
miles deep, which the army would enter as soon as it crossed that
stretch of the Rapidan immediately east of Lee's right flank, a leafy
tangle extending from just beyond Mine Run to just beyond Chancel-
lorsville. Joe Hooker, for one, could testify to the pitfalls hidden in that
jungle of stunted oak and pine, and so could the present commander of
the army that had come to grief in its depths, chief among them being
that the force on the defensive had the advantage of silent conceal-
ment — an advantage the butternut veterans had used so well, five
months ago, that Meade still considered himself lucky to have got back
out of there alive. Conversely, the blue army's main advantage, its pre-
ponderance in men and guns, would scarcely matter if it was brought
to battle there; numbers counted for little in those thickets, except to
increase the claustrophobia and the panic that came from being shot at
Another Grand Design [ 135 ]
from close quarters by a foe you could not see, and artillery had to fire
blind or not at all. As a drawback, this could hardly be overrated; but
Grant believed he saw a way to avoid it. The answer was speed. If the
troops moved fast enough, and began their march after nightfall screened
the crossing from the rebel lookout station on Clark's Mountain across
the way, they could get through the Wilderness and gain the open
country just beyond it, where there was plenty of room for maneuver,
before Lee had time to interfere. A4oreover, this belief was founded
on experience. Both Meade and Hooker, who had crossed by the same
fords Grant intended to use now — Ely's and Germanna — had spent
two full days on the far side of the river before they came to grips with
anything substantial, and in both cases, what was more, they had done
so as part of their plans: Meade by moving directly against the enemy
at Mine Run, Hooker by calling a halt at Chancellorsville and inviting
the enemy to attack him. Grant had no intention of doing either of
these things. He intended to bull right through, covering those eight
vine-choked miles in the shortest possible time — certainly less than
two full days — and thus be out in the open, where Lee would have
nothing better than a choice between attacking or being attacked.
Either would suit Grant's purpose admirably, once he had his troops
on ground where their superior numbers and equipment could be
brought to bear and thus decide the issue in accordance with the odds.
By way of assuring speed on the projected march, or in any case a
touch of the hard-driving ruthlessness that would be needed to obtain
it, he had already made one important change in the makeup of the arm
of the service that would lead the way across the Rapidan and down
the roads beyond. In conference with Lincoln and Halleck, soon after
his return from Tennessee and before he established headquarters in the
field, he had expressed his dissatisfaction with cavalry operations in the
eastern theater. What was needed, he said, was "a thorough leader."
Various candidates for the post were mentioned and discarded, until
Halleck came up with the answer. "How would Sheridan do?" he asked.
This was Major General Philip H. Sheridan, then in command of an in-
fantry division under Thomas near Chattanooga. His only experience
with cavalry had been a five-week term as colonel of a Michigan regi-
ment after Shiloh, nearly two years ago, and he had not only never
served in Virginia, he had never even been over the ground in peacetime,
so great was his dislike of all things southern. But Grant thought he
would do just fine in command of the eastern army's three divisions of
13,000 troopers. "The very man I want," he said, and Sheridan was sent
for. He arrived in early April, checked into Willard's, and went at once
to the White House, much as Grant had done the month before. The
interview was marred, however, when the President brought up the
familiar jest: "Who ever saw a dead cavalryman?" Sheridan was not
amused. If he had his way, there were going to be a great many dead
[136] THE CIVIL WAR3T1864
cavalrymen lying around, Union as well as Confederate. Back at
Willard's with friends, he said as much, and more. "I'm going to take
the cavalry away from the bobtailed brigadier generals," he vowed.
"They must do without their escorts. I intend to make the cavalry an
arm of the service."
He was different, and he brought something different and hard
into the army he now joined. "Smash 'em up, smash 'em up!" he would
say as he toured the camps, smacking his palm with his fist for em-
phasis, and then ride off on his big hard-galloping horse, a bullet-
headed little man with close-cropped hair and a black mustache and
imperial, bandy-legged, long in the arms, all Irish but with a Mongol
look to his face and form, as if something had gone strangely wrong
somewhere down the line in Ireland. Just turned thirty-three, he was five
feet five inches tall and he weighed 115 pounds with his spurs on;
"one of those long-armed fellows with short legs," Lincoln remarked
of him, "that can scratch his shins without having to stoop over."
Mounted, he looked about as tall and burly as the next man, so that
when he got down from his horse his slightness came as a shock. "The
officer you brought on from the West is rather a little fellow to handle
your cavalry," someone observed at headquarters, soon after Sheridan
reported for duty. Grant took a pull at his cigar, perhaps remembering
Missionary Ridge. "You'll find him big enough for the purpose before
we get through with him," he said. And in point of fact, the undersized,
Ohio-raised West Pointer held much the same views on war as his chief,
who was Ohio born and had finished West Point ten years earlier, also
standing about two thirds of the way down in his class. Those views,
complementing Sheridan's even more succinct "Smash 'em up, smash 'em
up!" could be stated quite briefly, a staff physician found out about this
time. They were sitting around, idle after a hard day's work, and the
doctor asked the general-in-chief for a definition of the art of war.
Grant turned the matter over in his mind — no doubt preparing to
quote Jomini or some other highly regarded authority, his listeners
thought — and then replied, as if in confirmation of what his friend
Longstreet was telling Lee's staff about now, across the way: "Find out
where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can, and strike him as
hard as you can. And keep moving on."
That was to be the method, and by now he had also arrived at the
date on which it would begin to be applied. April 27 — the day after he
told Halleck, "I feel much better with this command" — was his forty-
second birthday; a year ago today, at Hard Times, Louisiana, he had
braced his western army for the crossing of the greatest river of them
all, the Mississippi, and the opening of the final stage in the campaign
that took Vicksburg. It was therefore a fitting day for fixing the date
for what would be the greatest jump-off of them all, east or west, east
and west. Burnside by now was in motion from Annapolis, charged
Another Grand Design [ J 37 ]
with replacing Meade's troops on guard along the railroad between
Manassas and the Rappahannock, and Meade was free to concentrate
his whole force in the V of the two rivers. Today was Wednesday.
Allowing a full week for the completion of all this, together with final
preparations for crossing the Rapidan at designated fords, Grant set
the date for Wednesday next: May 4. Notice of this was sent at once
to Meade and Burnside, as well as to Sigel and Butler, at Winchester and
Fort Monroe, and to Sherman in North Georgia, who would pass the
word to subordinates already poised for the leap at Dalton. This was
nine days later than the tentative date Grant had set in early April, but
he saw in the delay a double gain. Not only would it afford more time
for preparation, which should help to eliminate oversights and con-
fusion; it would also allow the Wilderness roads just that much addi-
tional time to dry, an important factor in consideration of the need for
speed in getting out of that briery snare in the shortest possible time.
As for getting out of Washington — also a highly desirable thing,
from a personal point of view — Grant had done that, for good, the
previous Sunday. Except for the chance they gave him to be with his
wife, his brief visits there had brought him little pleasure and much
strain. The public adulation had increased, and with it the discomfort,
including a flood of letters requesting his autograph (he had found a way
to cut down on these, however; "I don't get as many as I did when I
answered them," he said dryly) and a great deal of staring whenever he
ventured out, which he seldom did unless it was unavoidable, as it was
for example in getting from the station to Willard's and back. Observing
his "peculiar aloofness," a protective garment he wore against the
stares, one witness remarked that "he walked through a crowd as though
solitary." On his last morning there, having taken breakfast in the hotel
dining room before leaving to catch the train for Virginia, he was
spotted by a reporter as he came out into the lobby. "He gets over
the ground queerly," the journalist informed a friend that night. "He
does not march, nor quite walk, but pitches along as if the next step
would bring him on his nose. But his face looks firm and hard, and his
eye is clear and resolute, and he is certainly natural, and clear of all
appearance of self-consciousness." On the theory that this might be his
last chance for some time, the reporter presumed to intercept him with
a question: "I suppose, General, you don't mean to breakfast again
until the war is over?" — "Not here I don't," Grant said, and went on
out.
Nothing he had said or written, in conference or in corres-
pondence with Lincoln or Halleck or anyone else, had given any esti-
mate as to how much time the campaign about to open would require
before it achieved what he called "the first great object," which was
"to get possession of Lee's army." His preliminary instructions to
Meade, for instance — "Lee's army will be your objective point.
[138] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also" — had been dated April
9; but whether the result so much desired would be attained within
a year, or more, or considerably less, or not at all, remained to be seen.
No one was more concerned with the specific timing than Lincoln, who
would face a fight for survival in November, a fight he had good cause
to believe he would lose unless the voters' confidence was lifted within
the next six months by a substantial military accomplishment, rather
than lowered by the lack of one to compensate for the lengthening
casualty lists. And yet, despite the anxiety and strain — so well had he
learned his lesson in the course of having shared in the planning, and
often in the prosecution, of half a dozen failed offensives here in the
East in the past three bloody years — he maintained his hands-ofF atti-
tude, even to the extent of not asking his new general-in-chief for an
informal guess at the schedule, east or west. It was as if, having tried
interference to the limit of his ability, he now was determined to try
abstention to the same extent. He had learned patience, and something
more; he had learned submission. "I attempt no compliment to my own
sagacity," he recently had told a Kentucky friend in a letter he knew
would be published. "I claim not to have controlled events, but confess
plainly that events have controlled me."
In line with this, as if to underscore his hands-off intention while
at the same time giving assurance of continuing support, he sent Grant
a farewell note on the last day of April, four days before the big offen-
sive was to begin.
Lieutenant General Grant:
Not expecting to see you again before the spring campaign
opens, I wish to express in this way my entire satisfaction with what
you have done up to this time, so far as I understand it. The particulars
of your plan I neither know nor seek to know. You are vigilant and
self-reliant; and, pleased with this, I wish not to obtrude any con-
straints or restraints upon you. While I am very anxious that any
great disaster or capture of our men in great numbers shall be avoided,
I know these points are less likely to escape your attention than they
would be mine. If there is anything wanting which is within my
power to give, do not fail to let me know it. And now, with a brave
army and a just cause, may God sustain you.
Yours very truly,
A. Lincoln.
Next day — May Day — Grant "acknowledged with pride" the
President's "very kind letter" as soon as it reached him at Culpeper.
"It will be my earnest endeavor that you and the country shall not be
disappointed," he wrote, and added, by way of returning the compli-
ments paid him: "Since the promotion which placed me in command of
all the armies, and in view of the great responsibility and importance of
success, I have been astonished at the readiness with which everything
Another Grand Design [ 139 ]
asked for has been yielded, without even an explanation being asked.
Should my success be less than I desire and expect, the least I can say is,
the fault is not with you."
And having said as much he turned his attention back to matters
at hand. Two nights from now, in the small hours of Wednesday morn-
ing, the army would be moving down to the river for a crossing.
Braced as best he could manage for the blow he knew was coming,
though he did not know just when or where it would land, Jefferson
Davis had cause to be grateful for the apparent delay beyond the final
day of April, which arrived without bringing word to Richmond that
the Union drive had opened from any direction, east or west. Not only
did this afford him time for additional preparations, such as getting
a few more soldiers up to Lee or down to Beauregard; it also seemed
to mean that he and his country would emerge unscathed from what had
been in the past, for them, the crudest month. Although he was by no
means superstitious, the pattern was too plain to be denied. In April
of 1 86 1 the war itself had begun when Lincoln maneuvered him into
opening fire on Sumter. Next year it had brought the death of his friend
and idol, Albert Sidney Johnston, together with defeat in the half-won
battle of Shiloh. Last year, in that same unlucky month, Grant and
Hooker had launched the two offensives that cost the Confederacy the
knee-buckling double loss of Vicksburg and Stonewall Jackson. How-
ever, this fourth April seemed about to be proved the exception to the
rule. Militarily, so far as actual contact was concerned, the news from
all three major theaters — from Louisiana and Arkansas, out in the
Transmississippi, from Fort Pillow in the West, and from Plymouth,
here in the East — had been nothing but good all month. If Davis, on the
last morning in April, having walked the four blocks from the White
House to his office adjoining Capitol Square and found no unduly
woeful dispatch on his desk, paused to congratulate himself and his
country on their delivery from the jinx, it would not have been without
apparent justification. Yet he would have been wrong, horribly wrong.
Before the day was over he would be struck the heaviest personal
blow of the war: just such a blow as his adversary Lincoln had been
struck, twenty-six months ago, in that other White House up in
Washington.
He worked all morning, partly on administrative matters, which
critics saw as consuming a disproportionate share of his time, and partly
on intelligence reports — they made for difficult sifting, since different
commanders predicted different objectives for the overdue Union
offensive, generally in hair-raising proximity to their headquarters —
then broke for lunch, which his wife brought on a tray from home to
tempt his meager appetite. Before the dishes could be set in front of
[ Ho] THE CIVIL WAR3T1864
him, however, a house servant came running with news that Joe, their
five-year-old, third of the four children who ranged in age from nine to
three, had fallen from a high rear balcony onto the brick-paved court-
yard thirty feet below. They hurried there to find him unconscious.
Both legs were broken and his skull was fractured, apparently the result
of having climbed a plank some carpenters had left resting against the
balustrade when they quit for the noonday meal. He died soon after
his mother reached him, and the house was filled with the screams of his
Irish nurse, hysterical with sorrow and guilt from having let him out of
her sight. His brother Jeff, two years older, had been the one to find
him lying crumpled on the bricks. "I have said all the prayers I know
how," he told a neighbor who came upon him kneeling there beside his
dying brother, "but God will not wake Joe."
Under the first shock of her loss, the emotional impact of which
was all the greater because she was seven months pregnant, Varina
Davis was nearly as bad off as the nurse. But the most heartbreaking
sight of all, Burton Harrison thought, was the father's "terrible self-
control," which denied him the relief of tears. Little Joe had been his
favorite, the child on whom he had "set his hope," according to his
wife. Each night the boy had said his prayers at his father's knee, and
often he had come in the early morning to be taken up into the big
bed. Davis retired to his White House study, determined to go on with
his work as an antidote to thinking of these things, and Mrs Davis joined
him there as soon as she recovered from her initial shock. Presently
a courier arrived with a dispatch from Lee. Davis took it, stared at it for
a long minute, then turned to his wife with a stricken expression on
his face. "Did you tell me what was in it?" he asked. Grief had paralyzed
his mind, she saw, and her husband realized this too when he tried
to compose his answer. "I must have this day with my little son," he
cried, and moved blindly out of the room and up the stairs. Visitors
heard him up there in the bedroom, pacing back and forth and saying
over and over as he did so: "Not mine, O Lord, but thine." Meantime
the boy was laid out in a casket, also in one of the upper rooms. His
nurse lay flat on the floor alongside him, keening, while across the hall
the father paced and paced the night away. "Not mine, O Lord, but
thine," he kept saying, distracted by his grief.
All night the mourners came and went, cabinet members, high-
ranking army and navy officers, dignitaries in town for the convening
of Congress two days later, and yet the tall gray stucco house had an
aspect of desolation, at once eerie and garish. Every room was brightly
lighted, gas jets flaring, and the windows stood open on all three
stories, their curtains moving in and out as the night breeze rose and
fell. Next afternoon — May Day: Sunday — the funeral procession
wound its way up the steep flank of Church Hill to Hollywood Ceme-
Another Grand Design [ 141 ]
tery, where many illustrious Confederates lay buried. Although Joe
had been too young for school, having just turned five in April, more
than a thousand schoolchildren followed the hearse, each bearing a
sprig of evergreen or a spray of early flowers which they let fall on the
hillside plot as they filed past. Standing by the open grave, Davis and
his wife were a study in contrast. Heavy with the child she would bear in
June, she wore black, including a veil, and her tall figure drooped
beneath the burden of her grief, while her husband, twenty years her
senior at fifty-five, yet lithe of form and erect as one of the monuments
stark against the sky behind him, wore his accustomed suit of homespun
gray. Down below, the swollen James purled and foamed around its
rocks and islands, and now for the first time, as they watched him stand
uncovered in the sunlight beside the grave of the son on whom he had
set his hope, people saw that Davis, acquainted increasingly with sorrow
in his private as in his public life, had begun to look his age and more.
The words "vibrant" and "boyish," so often used by journalists and others
to describe their impression of him, no longer applied. Streaks of gray
were in his hair, unnoticed until now, and the blind left eye looked
blinder in this light.
There was no evidence of this, however, in his message of greeting
to the newly elected Second Congress when it convened the following
day on Capitol Hill. Though the words were read by the clerk, in
accordance with custom, their tone of quiet reliance and not-so-quiet
defiance was altogether characteristic of their author. "When our in-
dependence, by the valor and fortitude of our people, shall have been
won against all the hostile influences combined against us, and can no
longer be ignored by open foes or professed neutrals, this war will have
left with its proud memories a record of many wrongs which it may not
misbecome us to forgive, [as well as] some for which we may not
properly forbear from demanding redress. In the meantime, it is enough
for us to know that every avenue of negotiation is closed against us, that
our enemy is making renewed and strenuous efforts for our destruction,
and that the sole resource for us, as a people secure in the justice of our
cause and holding our liberties to be more precious than all other earthly
possessions, is to combine and apply every available element of power
for their defense and preservation." By way of proof that such a course
of action could be effective against the odds, he was pleased to review
the triumphs scored in all three major theaters since the previous Con-
gress adjourned: after which he passed at once to the expected perora-
tion, assuring his hearers that, just as they were on God's side, so was
God on theirs. "Let us then, while resolute in devoting all our energies
to securing the realization of the bright auspices which encourage us,
not forget that our humble and most grateful thanks are due to Him
without whose guidance and protecting care all human efforts are of
[142] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
no avail, and to whose interposition are due the manifold successes with
which we have been cheered."
Just over sixty air-line miles northwest of the chamber in which
the clerk droned through the presidential message, Lee was meeting with
his chief infantry lieutenants atop Clark's Mountain, immediately north-
east of the point where the railroad crossed the Rapidan north of Orange.
He had called them together, his three corps and eight division com-
manders, to make certain that each had a good inclusive look at the
terrain for which they would be fighting as soon as Grant made the
move that Lee by now was convinced he had in mind. Not that most
of them had not fought there before; they had, except for Longstreet
and his two subordinates, who had missed both Chancellorsville and
Mine Run; but the panoramic view from here, some six or seven hundred
feet above the low-lying country roundabout, presented all the ad-
vantages of a living map unrolled at their feet for their inspection and
instruction, and as such — lovely, even breath-taking in its sweep and
grandeur, a never-ending carpet with all the vivid greens of advancing
spring commingled in its texture — would serve, as nothing else could
do, to fix the over-all character of the landscape in their minds.
For the most part — though their youth was disguised, in all but
two heavily mustached cases, by beards in a variety of styles, from full-
shovel to Vandyke — they were men in their prime, early-middle-aged
at worst. Longstreet was forty-three, and the other two corps com-
manders, Lieutenant Generals Richard S. Ewell and A. P. Hill, were
respectively four years older and five years younger, while the division
commanders averaged barely forty, including one who was forty-eight;
"Old Allegheny," he was called, as if he vied in ancientness with the
mountains beyond the Blue Ridge. Aside from him, Lee at fifty-seven
was ten years older than any other general on the hilltop, and like Davis,
despite the vigor of his movements, the quick brown eyes in his high-
colored face, and the stalwart resolution of his bearing, he had begun to
show his age. His hair, which had gone from brown to iron gray in the
first year of the war, was now quite white along his temples, and the
same was true of his beard, which he wore clipped somewhat closer
now than formerly, as if in preparation for long-term fighting. The past
winter had been a hard one for him, racking his body with frequent
attacks that were diagnosed as lumbago, and though his health improved
with warming weather, the opening months of spring had been even
harder to endure, not only because they brought much rain, which
tended to oppress him, but also because it galled his aggressive nature
to be obliged to wait, as he fretfully complained, "on the time and
place of the enemy's choosing" for battle. Just over twenty months
ago, after less than three months in command of the newly-assembled
army with which he had whipped McClellan back from the outskirts of
Another Grand Design [ 143 ]
Richmond, he had stood on this same mountaintop and watched Pope's
blue host file northward out of the trap he had laid for it there in the
V of the rivers, and he had said to Longstreet then: "General, we little
thought that the enemy would turn his back upon us thus early in the
campaign." It was different now. Grant he knew would move, not north
across the Rappahannock, but south across the Rapidan, and all Lee
could do was prepare to meet him with whatever skill and savagery
were required to drive him back: which, in part, was why he had
brought his ranking subordinates up here for a detailed look at the
terrain on which he planned to do just that. Believing as he did that an
outnumbered army should be light on its feet and supple in the hands
of its commander, his custom was to give his lieutenants a great deal of
latitude in combat, and he wanted to make certain that they were
equipped, geographically at least, to exercise with judgment the initia-
tive he encouraged them to seize whenever they were on their own —
as, in fact, every unit commander, gray or blue, was likely to be in that
tangled country down below, especially in the thickets that lay like pale
green smoke over that portion called the Wilderness, stretching eastward
beyond Mine Run.
The Rapidan flowed to their right, practically at their feet as they
stood looking north toward Culpeper, the hilltop town ten miles away,
where A. P. Hill had been born and raised and where Grant now had
his headquarters. Another ten miles farther on, hazy in the distance, the
dark green line of the Rappahannock crooked southeast to its junction
with the nearer river, twenty miles due east of the domed crest of
Clark's Mountain, and then on out of sight toward Fredericksburg, still
another ten miles beyond the roll of the horizon. All this lay before and
below the assembled Confederates, who could also see the conical tents
and white-topped wagons clustered and scattered in and about the
camps Meade's army had pitched in the arms of the stream-bound V
whose open end was crossed by the twin threads of the railroad glinting
silver in the sunlight. There was a good deal of activity in those camps
today, as indeed there had been the day before, a Sunday, but the gen-
erals on the mountain gave their closest attention to the gray-green ex-
panse of the Wilderness, particularly its northern rim, as defined by the
meandering Rapidan; Hooker and Meade had both crossed there in
launching the two most recent Union offensives, and Lee believed that
Grant would do the same, even to the extent of using the same fords,
Ely's and Germanna, four and ten miles respectively from the junction
of the rivers. He not only believed it, he said it. Apparently that was
another reason he had brought his lieutenants up here: to say it and to
show them as he spoke. Suddenly, without preamble or explanation, he
raised one gauntleted hand and pointed specifically at the six-mile
stretch of the Rapidan that flowed between the two points where the
Federals twice had thrown their pontoon bridges in preparation for all-
[144] THE CIVIL WAR35-1864
out assaults on the Army of Northern Virginia. "Grant will cross by one
of these fords," he said.
Deliberately spoken, the words had the sound of a divination, now
and even more so in the future, when they were fulfilled and his hearers
passed them down as an instance of Lee's ability to read an opponent's
mind. However, though this faculty was real enough on the face of it,
having been demonstrated repeatedly in most of his campaigns, it was
based on nothing occult or extrasensory, as many of his admirers liked
to claim, but rather on a careful analysis of such information as came
to hand in the normal course of events — from enemy newspapers
closely scanned, from scouts and spies and friendly civilians who made
it through the Yankee lines, from loquacious deserters and tight-mouthed
prisoners tripped by skillful interrogation — plus a highly developed
intelligence procedure, by which he was able not only to put himself
in the other man's position, but also to become that man, so to speak,
in making a choice among the opportunities the situation seemed to
afford him for accomplishing the destruction of the Army of Northern
Virginia. Like other artists in other lines of endeavor, Lee produced
by hard labor, midnight oil, and infinite pains what seemed possible only
by uncluttered inspiration. Quite the opposite of uncanny, his method
was in fact so canny that it frequently produced results which only an
apparent wizard could achieve. The Clark's Mountain prediction was a
case in point. Lee had spent a major part of his time for the past two
months — ever since Grant's arrival and elevation, in early March —
at work on the problem of just what his new adversary was going to do,
and for the past two weeks — ever since April 1 8, when he ordered
all surplus baggage sent to the rear — he had given the matter his
practically undivided attention: with the result that, after a process of
selection and rejection much like Grant's across the way, he had come
up with what he believed was the answer. Grant would cross the Rapi-
dan by Ely's Ford or Germanna Ford, and having done so he either
would turn west for an attack on the Confederate right flank, as Meade
had done in November, or else he would do as Hooker had intended to
do, a year ago this week, and maneuver for a battle in the open, where
he could bring his superior numbers to bear. Which of these two courses
the Federal commander meant to adopt once he was across the river
did not really matter to Lee, since he did not intend to give him a chance
to do either. Lee's plan was to let him cross, then hit him there in the
Wilderness with everything he had, taking advantage of every equalizing
impediment the terrain afforded, in order to whip him as thoroughly
as possible in the shortest possible time, and thus drive him, badly cut
up, back across the Rapidan. He did not say all this today, however. He
merely said that Grant would cross by one of those fords on the rim
of the Wilderness, and then he mounted Traveller and led the way back
down the mountain.
Another Grand Design [ 145 ]
Nor did he act, just yet, on the contingent decision he had reached.
Only today, in fact, he had instructed Longstreet to shift one of his
two divisions northwest of Gordonsville, in order to have it in a better
position to meet the challenge Grant would pose if he attempted a move
around the Confederate left, in the opposite direction from the one pre-
dicted. Lacking definite confirmation of what was after all no more
than a theoretical opinion, an educated guess, Lee could not commit his
army to a large-scale counteraction of a movement which there was even
an outside chance the enemy might not make; he had to leave a sizeable
margin for error, including total error. That night, however, the signal
station on Clark's Mountain reported observing moving lights in the
Federal camps, and next morning — May 3: Tuesday — there were re-
ports of heavy clouds of dust, stirred up by columns marching here and
there, and smoke in unusual volume, as if the bluecoats were engaged
in the last-minute destruction of camp equipment and personal belong-
ings for which they would have no use when they moved out.
All day this heightened activity continued, past sundown and into
the night. Presently the signalmen blinked a message to army head-
quarters that long columns of troops were passing in front of campfires
down there on the far bank of the Rapidan. Headquarters responded
with a question: Was the movement west or east, upstream in Hill's
direction on the left or downstream in Ewell's direction on the right?
The signal station was in visual communication with both corps com-
manders, as well as with Lee, but it could find no answer to the question.
All that could be seen across the way was the winking of campfires as
files of men passed in front of them. There was no way of telling, from
this, whether the troops were moving upstream or down, to the left or
to the right. By now it was close to midnight; May 4 would be dawning
within five hours. Lee decided to act at last on yesterday's prediction,
and sent word accordingly for the signalmen to flash a message to the
corps on the right, down toward Mine Run: "General Ewell, have your
command ready to move at daylight."
The Forty Days
* x &
GRANT CAMEASLEE HAD SAID HEWOULD,
only more so, crossing the Rapidan not merely by "one of those fords,"
Ely's or Germanna, but by both — and, presently, by still another
for good measure. Sheridan's new-shod cavalry led the way, splashing
across the shallows in the darkness soon after midnight, May 4, and
while the engineers got to work in the waist-deep water, throwing a
pair of wood and canvas pontoon bridges at each of the two fords, the
troopers established bridgeheads on the enemy side of the river at both
points and sent out patrols to explore the narrow, jungle-flanked, moon-
less roads tunneling southward through the Wilderness. Near the head
of one column the horsemen got to talking as they felt their way toward
Chancellorsville, a name depressing to the spirits of any Federal who
had been there with Joe Hooker just a year ago this week. One of the
group, anticipating a quick pink-yellow stab of flame and a humming,
bone-thwacking bullet from every shadow up ahead, remarked uneasily
that he had never supposed "the army went hunting around in the night
for Johnnies in this way."
"We're stealing a march on old man Lee," a veteran explained.
They thought this over, remembering the loom of Clark's Moun-
tain and the rebel lookout station on its peak, and before long someone
put the thought into words. "Lee will miss us in the morning."
"Yes, and then watch out," another veteran declared. "He'll come
tearing down this way ready for a fight."
Though all agreed that this would certainly be in character, Lee
did no such thing: at least not yet. Morning came and the crossing pro-
gressed smoothly in their rear, including the installation of still a fifth
bridge at Culpeper Mine Ford, two miles above Ely's, to speed the
passage of the army train, the laggard, highly vulnerable element to
which all the others, mounted or afoot, had to conform for its protec-
tion on the march. Slow-creaking and heavily loaded with ten days'
The Forty Days [ 147 ]
subsistence for nearly 150,000 men and ten days' grain for better than
56,000 mules and horses (strung out along a single road, if any such
had been available, this monster train would have covered the sixty-odd
miles from the Rapidan to Richmond without a break from head to
tail) the wagons passed over the two lower fords in the wake of Major
General Winfleld S. Hancock's II Corps, the largest of Meade's three,
which crossed at Ely's in the darkness and began to make camp at
Chancellorsville, five miles from the river, before noon. The brevity of
the march was necessary if the combat units were to provide con-
tinuous protection for the road-jammed train, but the men, slogging
along under packs about as heavy-laden as the wagons in their rear, were
thankful for the early halt; they carried, as directed in the carefully
worded order, "50 rounds of ammunition upon the person, three days'
full rations in their haversacks, [and] three days' bread and short rations
in their knapsacks." At Germanna, meantime, Major General Gouv-
erneur K. Warren's V Corps crossed and marched six miles southeast
to Wilderness Tavern, near the intersection of the Germanna Plank
Road and the Orange-Fredericksburg Turnpike, where it made camp
in the early afternoon, five miles west of Hancock, leaving room behind
for Major General John Sedgwick's VI Corps to bed down beside the
road, between the tavern and the river, well before sundown. Grant
was pleased, when he reached the upper ford about midday and clattered
over with his staff, to note that the passage of the Rapidan was being ac-
complished in excellent order, strictly according to schedule, and with-
out a suggestion of enemy interference. "This I regarded as a great
success," he later reported, because "it removed from my mind the most
serious apprehensions I had entertained, that of crossing the river in the
face of an active, large, well-appointed, and ably-commanded army."
Gratified by the evidence that he had indeed stolen a march on old
man Lee, he got off a wire at 1.15 to Burnside at Rappahannock Station,
instructing him to bring his IX Corps down to Germanna without delay.
Another went to Halleck, back in Washington: "The crossing of the
Rapidan effected. Forty-eight hours now will demonstrate whether the
enemy intends giving battle this side of Richmond. Telegraph Butler
that we have crossed." This done, he rode on a short distance and estab-
lished headquarters beside the road, near a deserted house whose front
porch afforded him and his military family a shaded, airy position from
which to observe his soldiers on the march. He was dressed unchar-
acteristically in full regimentals, including his sword and sash and even
a pair of brown cotton-thread gloves, three stars glinting impressively on
each shoulder of his best frock coat. What was more, his manner was as
expansive as his trappings — a reaction, apparently, to his sudden re-
lease from concern that he might be attacked with his army astride the
river. As he sat there smoking and swapping remarks with his associates,
a newspaper correspondent approached and asked the question not even
[148] THE CIVIL WAR^ 1864
Lincoln had put to him in the past two months. How long was it going
to take him to reach Richmond?
Grant not only expressed no resentment at the reporter's inquisi-
tive presumption; he even answered him. "I will agree to be there in
about four days," he said, to the astonishment of the newsman and his
staff. Then he added: "That is, if General Lee becomes a party to the
agreement. But if he objects, the trip will undoubtedly be prolonged."
Laughter increased the pervasive feeling of well-being and relief,
and orders soon were distributed for tomorrow's march, which had been
prepared beforehand for release if all went well: as, indeed, all had. One
change there was, however, occasioned by a report that Sheridan re-
ceived that afternoon. Chagrined at encountering none of Major Gen-
eral J. E. B. Stuart's highly touted butternut troopers in the course of his
probe of the Wilderness south of the two fords, he learned that this was
because they were assembled near Fredericksburg for a grand review
next day at Hamilton's Crossing, a dozen miles to the east, and he asked
permission to take two of his three divisions in that direction at first light
in order to get among them, smash them up, and thus abolish at the out-
set of the campaign one of the problems that would have to be solved
before its finish. Grant was willing, and so was Meade, though more
reluctantly, being hidebound in his notion as to the primary duty of
cavalry on a march through enemy country. In any case, the army
would still have one of its mounted divisions for such work, and that
seemed ample, especially if tomorrow's advance required no more of
the blue outriders than today's had done. For one thing, since the train
would not complete its crossing of the Rapidan before late tomorrow
afternoon, and would thus require that the three infantry corps hold
back and keep well closed up for its protection, the marches were to
be about as brief. Hancock would move south and west, first to Todd's
Tavern and then to Shady Grove Church, down on the Catharpin Road,
extending his right toward Parker's Store on the Orange Plank Road,
which was to be Warren's stopping point. Warren in turn would extend
his right toward Wilderness Tavern, his present position astride the
Orange Turnpike, which Sedgwick would occupy tomorrow, leaving
one division on guard at Germanna Ford until Burnside's lead division
arrived. Despite their brevity (Hancock had nine miles to cover, Warren
and Sedgwick barely half that) all marches were to begin at 5 o'clock
promptly, which was sunup. Upon reaching their designated objectives,
Wilderness Tavern, Parker's Store, and Shady Grove Church — each
commanding a major road coming in from the west, where Lee pre-
sumably still was unless he had already taken alarm and fallen back
southward — all units were to prepare at once for getting under way
as promptly the following day, Friday the 6th, which would take them
out of the Wilderness and into the open country beyond, in position for
The Forty Days [ 149 ]
coming to grips with the Confederates on terrain that would favor the
army superior in numbers.
Forty-eight hours would tell the story, Grant had informed Hal-
leck early that afternoon, and all the indications were that the story
would have an ending that was happy from the Federal point of view.
Careful planning seemed to have paid off handsomely. Not only were his
"most serious apprehensions" — that he would be jumped while astride
the Rapidan — behind him, but his second greatest worry — that he
would have to fight in the blind tangle of the Wilderness — was all but
behind him, too. "Enemy moving infantry and trains toward Verdiers-
ville," the signal station on Stony Mountain informed him at 3 p.m.
"Two brigades gone from this front. Camps on Clark's Mountain break-
ing up. Battery still in position behind Dr Morton's house, and infantry
pickets on the river." That had far more the sound of preparations for
a withdrawal than for an attack, and there seemed to be little of urgency
in the Confederate reaction, such as it was. Grant could turn in for a
good night's sleep in a much less fretful state of mind than the one in
which he had lain down the night before, while poised for the crossing
which now was complete except for a couple of thousand more wagons
and Burnside's corps, whose arrival would give him a combat strength
of 122,000 effectives on the rebel side of the river: an army which,
arrayed for battle, two ranks deep, with one third of its units held rear-
ward in reserve, would extend for twenty-five miles from flank to flank.
That was roughly twice as many troops as Lee could muster of all arms.
Grant was not only willing, he was altogether anxious to take him on
at the earliest possible moment, preferably out in the open, where he
could bring his superior ordnance to bear, or if not there then here in
this green maze of vines and briers and stunted oaks and pines, if the op-
portunity offered and that was what it came to. He turned in early
and apparently slept well.
That was not the case with a good many of the men who were
bivouacked in this haunted woodland by his orders. Unlike him, they
had been here before, and the memory was painful. In the fields around
Wilderness Tavern, it was afterwards recalled — including the one just
east of the deserted, ramshackle tavern itself, where Stonewall Jackson's
maimed left arm was buried — there was little or no singing round the
campflres, the usual pastime after a not-too-hard day's march, and there
was even a tendency to avoid. the accustomed small talk. This was due,
one soldier declared, to "a sense of ominous dread which many of us
found it almost impossible to shake off." There was, in fact, much about
the present situation that was remindful of the one a year ago, when
all ranks had engaged in a carnival of self-congratulation on the results
of careful planning and stout marching; "The rebel army is now the
legitimate property of the Army of the Potomac," Hooker had an-
[ 150] THE CIVIL WAR3T1864
nounced on that other May Day, just before he came to grief, suffer-
ing better than 17,000 casualties before he managed to scurry out of this
scrub oak jungle and back across the Rappahannock, beyond the reach
of a gray army barely one third the size of his own. Grant, they knew,
was no such spouter, but they remembered Fighting Joe and other even
more unpleasant things, such as brush fires set by bursting shells, in
which men with broken backs and bullet-shattered legs had been
roasted alive before the stretcher bearers could get at them. Even recruits
could see the danger. "These woods will surely be burned if we fight
here," one said when they first called a halt that afternoon.
Over near Chancellorsville, where the whippoorwills began calling
plaintively soon after sunset, now as then, the mood was much the same.
The fighting had been heaviest around here last year, and there still were
many signs of it, including skeletons in rotted blue, washed partly out
of their shallow graves by the rains of the past winter. No one but the
devil himself would choose such ground for a field of battle, veterans
said; the devil and old man Lee. In an artillery park near the ruin of the
Chancellor mansion, which had burned to its brick foundations on the
second day of conflict, a visiting infantryman looked glumly at a
weathered skull that stared back with empty sockets, grinning a lipless
grin. He prodded it with his boot, then turned to his comrades — saying
"you" and "you," not "we" and "us," for every soldier is superstitious
about foretelling his own death, having seen such words come true too
many times — and delivered himself of a prediction. "This is what you are
all coming to," he told them, "and some of you will start toward it to-
morrow."
In point of fact, the conversion of the blue invaders into skeletons
was just the kind of grisly work Lee had in mind, and he was moving
toward it, even now, with everything he had. Grant had taken care, in
his assignment of objectives for the following day, to see that each of the
three main roads coming in from the west would be covered by a corps
of infantry; for though logic and the evidence, such as it was, tended to
indicate that his adversary was in the process of falling back to a strong
defensive position athwart his path — probably on the banks of the
North Anna, twenty miles to the south — there was a chance that the
old fox might mass his troops for an attack, down one or another of those
roads, in an attempt to strike while the Union army was strung out in
the Wilderness. The truth was, Lee was coming by all three, a corps on
each.
Ewell, alerted the night before, would march eastward on the
Orange Turnpike, nearest the river, while Hill took the Orange Plank
Road, which paralleled the turnpike at a distance that varied from one
to three miles until the two converged, just short of Chancellorsville,
twenty-five miles away; Longstreet, down around Gordonsville, had a
The Forty Days [151]
greater distance to travel and would make a later start, having to call
in his troops from the far-left positions they had been obliged to hold
until Grant was committed to the upstream movement with all his force.
Ewell, with three divisions, began his march at 9 o'clock. Hill reached
Orange before noon, left one division there to guard the nearby Rapidan
crossings, and had his other two in motion on the plank road shortly
afterwards, the army commander riding with him near the head of the
column. Since the troops on the turnpike had a three-hour head start
and a straighter route, Ewell was told to regulate his speed by that of
Hill. Longstreet then was notified by courier to set out with his two
divisions, crossing the North Anna by Brock's Bridge, due east of
Gordonsville, then turning north to strike the Catharpin Road at
Richard's Shop, from which point his march would parallel those of
the other two corps, on his left between him and the Rapidan. Lee's
plan, though he announced no details yet, was to get within reach of
the Federals as soon as possible, bring them to a Wilderness-hampered
halt with Hill and Ewell, then launch an all-out hip-and-thigh assault
with all three corps, as soon as Longstreet came up on the right.
Ewell stopped for the night at Locust Grove, a couple of miles into
the Wilderness beyond Mine Run. Clustered about their skillet wagons
for supper, the men of his three divisions had no such reaction to their
surroundings as the men of Warren's four divisions were experiencing
around Wilderness Tavern, five miles up the pike, or those of Hancock's
four at Chancellorsville, another five miles east. Outnumbered as usual
on the eve of contact, and having fought here against odds as long and
longer, the butternut veterans understood that the cramped, leaf-
screened terrain would work to their advantage, now as before, and
their bivouacs hummed with banter and small talk as they bedded down,
after ravening their rations, to rest for the shock they knew was likely
to come tomorrow. Five miles southwest on the plank road, and still five
miles short of the western limits of the Wilderness, it was much the
same with the men of Hill's two divisions, rolled in their blankets and
sleeping under the stars. At sundown he had called a halt at Verdiers-
ville, eleven miles beyond Orange and nine from Parker's Store; "My
Dearsville," Hill's troops dubbed the hamlet. Here Lee had had his
headquarters during the Mine Run confrontation last November, and
his tent was pitched, tonight as then, in a field beside the road. Soon there
began to come to its flap a series of couriers bearing dispatches from
all quarters of Virginia — dispatches which in turn bore out, to the
letter, predictions he had been making for the past month as to the
nature of the offensive the Federals now had launched.
Of these, the most alarming came from the President himself. A
blue force, estimated at 30,000 of all arms and said to be commanded by
Ben Butler, was unloading from transports at City Point and Bermuda
Hundred, on the south bank of the James less than twenty miles from
[152] THE CIVIL WAR 3T 1864
Richmond, in position to break its vital rail connections with Petersburg
and points south, if not indeed to come swarming across its bridges and
into its streets in a matter of hours, since the capital had scarcely one tenth
that many troops for its defense. "With these facts and your previous
knowledge," Davis wired, demonstrating his accustomed calmness under
pressure, as well as his abiding trust in Lee, "you can estimate the con-
dition of things here, and decide how far your own movements should
be influenced thereby." Lee's decision was not to allow his movements
to be influenced at all by this development. He would continue to con-
centrate on meeting the threat to his immediate front, he informed Davis,
and leave Butler to Beauregard, who had been ordered to proceed at
once from Weldon to confront the southside invaders with such troops
as he could muster in his newly formed department. Lee's reaction to
a second grievous danger, reported from out in the Shendandoah Valley,
was much the same. Warned that a force of undetermined strength under
Sigel had begun an advance up the Valley in conjunction with another
movement west of the Alleghenies, he replied with a wire instructing
Breckinridge to assume "general direction of affairs" beyond the Blue
Ridge. "I trust you will drive the enemy back," he told him. This done,
he put both dangers — one to his rear, the other to his flank, and both
to his lines of supply and communication — out of his mind, at least for
the present, in order to give his undivided attention to the problem at
hand: specifically, how best to deal with Meade's blue host, which had
crossed the Rapidan bent on his destruction, but which was camped for
the present across his front in the green toils of the Wilderness.
That the Federals had called at least a temporary halt, instead of
pressing ahead on a night march to escape those toils and oblige him to
race southward for a meeting in the open, was welcome news indeed,
received in a series of messages Jeb Stuart kept sending to Verdiersville
from shortly after dark until near midnight, when he apparently decided
that the time had come to give his short-winded animals some rest.
Abandoning his plans for the Hamilton's Crossing review next day, the
cavalry leader was bringing his spruced-up troopers westward along the
southern fringes of the Wilderness in order to get in position by morning
on the right front of the army, there to protect its open flank and
reconnoiter the enemy advance when it resumed. That too was welcome
news, ensuring a continuous stream of intelligence, such as only cavalry
could gather, and providing a resilient cushion against shock. Welcome,
too, was a late-evening dispatch from Longstreet informing headquarters
that he had crossed Brock's Bridge and would camp there tonight, on the
near bank of the North Anna; he expected to reach Richard's Shop by
noon tomorrow, nine miles from Shady Grove Church and twelve from
Todd's Tavern. This meant that he most likely would be able to move
into his assigned position, up the Catharpin Road, by nightfall, in plenty
of time for launching the all-hands attack at first light Friday, after
The Forty Days [ 153 ]
Ewell and Hill made contact tomorrow and set the bluecoats up for the
assault designed to drive them back across the river they had crossed
today. Accordingly, Lee had his adjutant notify Ewell that he was to
move out early in the morning, continuing his march up the turnpike
in order to menace the Union flank if Grant kept heading south. If he
veered east, toward Fredericksburg, Ewell was to pursue him and fall
upon his rear; or if he turned this way, Ewell was to take up a strong
defensive position and hold him there in the tangled brush until Hill and
Longstreet came up on the right, at which point they would all three go
over to the offensive in accordance with Lee's plan. In any case, the
adjutant added, "the General's desire is to bring him to battle as soon
now as possible."
At breakfast next morning between dawn and sunup Lee was in
excellent spirits, refreshed by four or five hours of sleep and encouraged
by a follow-up message, just in from Stuart, that the three Federal corps
had in fact spent the whole night in their Wilderness camps. He ex-
pressed his satisfaction at this evidence that all was working as he hoped,
as well as at information that a brigade of Ewell's, detached for guard
duty at Hanover Junction, would be rejoining no later than tomorrow.
Together with last-minute piecemeal reinforcements sent from Rich-
mond during the past week, this would give him an over-all strength of
nearly 65,000 men in his eight divisions of infantry and three of cavalry.
Four brigades were still detached (Hoke's, in North Carolina, and three
with Major General George E. Pickett, comprising Longstreet's third
division, still convalescing in southside Virginia from its brief, horrific
experience on the third day at Gettysburg, ten months back) but Lee
regretted this less than he might have done except for a miscalculation
that contributed to the boldness of his plan for the annihilation or quick
repulse of the enemy in the thickets up ahead. He estimated the com-
bined strength of Meade and Burnside at not more than 75,000 men, and
therefore assumed — quite erroneously, since the Federals, with con-
siderably better than half again that many troops, had in fact almost
twice the number Lee could muster — that he was about to fight against
the shortest odds he had faced at any time since he assumed command of
the Army of Northern Virginia, two victory-crowded years ago next
month. Rising from breakfast he mounted Traveller and gave A. P. Hill
the word to resume his march up the plank road, first across the
"Poison Fields," as the leached-out mining region west of the Wilder-
ness was called, and then into the briery hug of the jungle where he
intended to come to grips with the invaders who, Stuart reported, seemed
unaware of his presence on their flank.
Beyond the moldering six-months-old intrenchments around the
headwaters of Mine Run, a couple of miles out of Verdiersville, this
unawareness ended with a spatter of fire from a detachment of Union
cavalry armed with seven-shot carbines. They were few in number,
[i54]
THE CIVIL WAR3T1864
apparently, and easily driven back (Stuart had arrived by now, re-
splendent in his red-lined cape, to attend to this by fanning his horsemen
out on the right and front) but word was certainly on the way to Grant
that graybacks were approaching Parker's Store in strength. Moreover,
a staff officer arrived from Ewell about this time to report that he had
sighted heavy columns of bluecoats crossing the Wilderness Tavern
intersection, two miles ahead on the Germanna Plank Road, perpendicu-
lar to the turnpike. It stood to reason that if Ewell could see the enemy,
so could the enemy see him; Grant would be forewarned in that direc-
tion, too. Lee repeated his instructions that the Second Corps, continu-
ing to regulate its march by that of the Third, was to move on and make
contact, but added that he preferred not to "bring on a general en-
gagement" until Longstreet came up. Hill was deep in the Wilderness
by then, out of touch with Ewell as a result of a widening divergence,
beyond Verdiersville, of the plank road from the turnpike, which was
almost three miles away by the time he reached Parker's Store at noon. At
this point, still riding near the head of Hill's two-division column, Lee
heard a rising clatter of rifle fire from the left front. Obviously there was
fighting on the turnpike, and from the sound of it, filtered through three
miles of brush and branches, the engagement was indeed "general,"
mounting to a quick crescendo like the rapid tearing of canvas, though
it lacked the deeper, rumbling tones artillery gave a battle at that distance.
Mindful of Lee's admonition not to "bring on a general engage-
ment," Ewell had deployed his lead division when he got within a couple
of miles of the Union-held crossroad, then brought up the second for
close support on both sides of the pike, warning the two commanders —
Major Generals Edward Johnson and Robert Rodes, who at forty-eight
and thirty-five were the oldest and youngest infantry division command-
The Forty Days [ 155 ]
ers in the army — "not to allow themselves to become involved, but to
fall back slowly if pressed." So he later reported, but the words had little
application when the time came, as it did all too soon: especially for the
men of Johnson's lead brigade, Virginians under Brigadier General John
M. Jones, who caught the initial and overwhelming impact of a whole
blue division that came hurtling at them, as if out of nowhere, through
brush and vines that limited vision to less than sixty feet in any direction.
Caught thus, they found it as impossible to "fall back slowly" as they had
to avoid becoming "involved." Losing Jones, who was killed by an early
volley from the dense wave of attackers, they broke and fled, spreading
panic through the ranks of an Alabama brigade Rodes had posted in their
rear. Ewell, so close to the front that the attack exploded practically in
his face, whirled his horse and raced back to bring help from his third
division, Major General Jubal Early's, which had kept to the road in
order to come up fast in an emergency such as the one that was now at
hand. In the lead was Brigadier General John B. Gordon's brigade,
Georgians who had a reputation for aggressiveness on short notice.
"General Gordon!" Ewell cried, his dragoon mustache bristling and
his prominent eyes bulging as he checked his mount with a hard pull on
the reins, "the day depends on you!"
"These men will save it, sir," Gordon replied, partly for the bene-
fit of the troops themselves, who had come crowding up, as was their
custom at such times, to hear what the brass had to say.
Going at once from march to attack formation, he advanced one
regiment unsupported in a countercharge straight up the pike, while the
rest deployed to go in on the right. On the left, two of Johnson's three
intact brigades reacted by clawing their way through the brush toward
the sound of firing, and Rodes's four did likewise, including the Ala-
bamians who had been rattled by the flight of the Virginians through their
ranks. As suddenly as it had risen, the tide of battle turned, and for the
former attackers, overlapped on both flanks and savagely assailed from
dead ahead by the screaming Georgians, the outcome was even more
disastrous. Now it was their turn to backtrack, losing heavily in the
process — though not as heavily as two other blue divisions, coming up in
sequence on the left and groping blindly for the flank they had been told
to support but could not find. Struck before they could form for attack or
defense, they were driven eastward in confusion, suffering grievously in
killed and wounded and losing several hundred prisoners, many of whom
fled unknowingly into the rebel lines, bereft of all sense of direction in
that maze of vines and brambles. It was, as one veteran said, a conflict "no
man saw or could see"; "A battle of invisibles with invisibles," another
called it. "As for fighting," a third declared, "it was simply bushwhacking
on a grand scale, in brush where all formation beyond that of regiments or
companies was soon lost and where such a thing as a consistent line of
battle on either side was impossible."
[156] THE CIVIL WAR3T1864
The pattern of Wilderness fighting had been set, and one of its
principal elements was panic, which came easily and spread rapidly on
terrain that had all the claustral qualities of a landscape in a nightmare,
with a variety of background sounds that ranged from a foreboding
silence, so dense that a man was likely to jump six feet at the snap of a
twig, to a veritable cataract of noise, referred to by a participant as "the
most terrific musketry firing ever heard on the American continent."
Ewell, still mindful of Lee's admonition, did not pursue beyond
the point at which the fight had opened, just under two miles west of the
crossroad. It was 3 o'clock by now, and he could tell himself, quite
truthfully, that he had done all that was asked of him and more, in-
flicting much heavier casualties than he suffered and fixing the enemy
there in the tangled depths of the Wilderness. He put his men to work
intrenching a line that extended about a mile to the left and a mile to
the right of the turnpike, and after hauling off two guns he had
captured in the course of his counterattack, he settled down to wait
for tomorrow, when Long9treet would be up and the army would
go over to the offensive. Fighting continued on a lesser scale all after-
noon and into the evening, and though he lost two more brigade com-
manders — Brigadier Generals Leroy Stafford of Louisiana and John
Pegram of Virginia, the former mortally wounded and the latter shot
in the leg — Ewell had no doubt that he would be able to hold his newly
fortified position, no matter what the Yankees sent against him.
There was no such assurance down on the plank road, three miles
south, where a separate battle swelled to a sudden and furious climax
at about the time the disjointed contest on the pike began to wane. For
Hill, whose two divisions were struck by a much heavier and far better
coordinated attack than the one that had been launched against Ewell's
three, there was no waning; there was hard, stand-up fighting from the
moment of earnest contact, around 4 o'clock, until darkness and exhaus-
tion persuaded the troops of both sides to rest on their arms, where they
then were, for a resumption at first light tomorrow of a struggle that had
been touch-and-go for the past four hours. His two divisions, com-
manded by Major Generals Henry Heth and Cadmus Wilcox, had con-
tinued their march beyond Parker's Store to within a mile of the Brock
Road, on which the Union infantry was known to be moving south,
when stiffened resistance brought the head of the gray column to a
halt. Heth formed for battle astride the road, and Lee — taking over
for Hill, who was sick today, as he had been at Gettysburg — set up
headquarters in a roadside clearing near the farmhouse of a widow
named Tapp. He had no sooner dismounted to confer with Stuart
and Hill, who had stayed with his men despite his disability, than a
platoon of blue-clad skirmishers walked into the clearing from behind
a stand of pines in its northeast corner, rifles at the ready. Apparently
as startled as the high-ranking Confederates were by the sudden con-
The Forty Days [ 157 ]
frontation, the Federals faded back into the pines instead of opening fire
or advancing to make the capture that would have changed the course
of the war. However thankful Lee was for this deliverance from the
hands of the bluecoats, their presence served to emphasize the dangerous
possibility of an enemy plunge, whether on purpose or by accident, into
the heavily wooded gap which the divergence of the two routes had
created between Hill, down here on the plank road, and Ewell, whose
battle was still in full swing on the turnpike. Accordingly, Lee sent word
for Wilcox to extend Hill's left by moving his division northward into
the brush beyond the clearing, thus to forestall a penetration of the
gap, while Heth resumed his eastward advance to develop the strength
of the blue force in his front. Though he still intended to withhold
delivery of his main effort until Longstreet was on hand, the southern
commander's hope was that Heth would be able to carry the Brock Road
intersection, less than a mile away, as an effective means of bringing the
Union army to a severed, panicky halt in the very depths of the Wilder-
ness, half a dozen miles from open ground in any direction.
It was now past 3 o'clock. A note went at once to Heth asking
whether, in his judgment, he could seize the intersection without bring-
ing on a "general engagement." Heth replied that the enemy seemed to
be there in strength; he could not tell how much an attack would spread
the action, but he was willing to give the thing a try if that was what
was wanted. While Lee was turning this over in his mind, back at the
Widow Tapp's, a sudden uproar from the immediate front — louder,
even, than the one that had exploded in Ewell's face, four hours ago —
informed him that the decision had been taken out of his hands. Un-
supported by Wilcox, who had moved off to the left, Heth was under
heavy, all-out assault from dead ahead.
Both attacks — the one against Ewell, up on the turnpike, and the
present one down the plank road against Hill — were the result of a
deliberate decision by Grant, whose self-confidence and natural com-
bativeness had not been lessened by the enlargement of his responsi-
bilities and who was determined, moreover, not to yield the tactical
initiative to an opponent with a reputation for making the most of it
on all occasions. If this meant the abandonment of his original intention
to get into, through, and out of the Wilderness in the shortest possible
time, then that just had to be. His primary talent had always been in-
stinctive, highly improvisatorial at its best, and though there was little
about him that could be described as Napoleonic, he trusted, like
Napoleon, in his star. The overriding fact, as Grant saw it, was that
the rebels were there in the tangled brush, somewhere off to the west,
and he was determined to hit them. He was determined, in Sheridan's
phrase, to smash them up at every opportunity.
Meade began it, quite on his own. Shortly after 7 o'clock that
[158] THE CIVIL WAR^ 1864
morning, by which time the leading elements of all three corps had
been two hours on the march, he was notified by Warren that the
commander of his rear division, preparing to head south from Wilder-
ness Tavern, had sighted a heavy butternut column moving toward him
on the turnpike, two or three miles west of the Germanna Plank Road
intersection. Reacting fast, Meade ordered Warren to bring his other
three divisions back to their starting point and advance his whole corps
down the pike, in order to confront and, if possible, destroy the rebel
force. He believed that it amounted to no more than a division, "left
here to fool us," he told Warren, "while they concentrate and prepare
a position toward the North Anna," and he saw in the situation an
opportunity to effect a considerable subtraction from Lee's army before
coming to earnest grips with the rest of it in the open country to the
south. With time to spare and the train still grinding slowly down the
crowded roads to the east, he could afford a brief delay, especially one
that held the promise of so rich a prize. In any case, with his exterior
flank so threatened by a force of undetermined strength, he believed
the decision was tactically sound; for, as he told Grant in a note in-
forming him of the order for Warren to countermarch and attack, "until
this movement of the enemy is developed, the march of the corps must
be suspended."
Arriving shortly afterward for a meeting near the tavern, in
whose yard Meade was conferring with Warren, Grant not only in-
dorsed his chief lieutenant's aggressive reaction to the news that there
were rebels on his flank; he also enlarged upon it, in a characteristic
manner, with words that applied not only here but elsewhere. "If any
opportunity presents itself for pitching into a part of Lee's army," he
told him, "do so without giving time for disposition." In accordance
with this policy — which might be described as: "Hit now. Worry
later" — when word was brought that another gray force had been
spotted marching eastward on the plank road, down around Parker's
Store, Hancock too was given orders to backtrack. Instead of con-
tinuing down the Catharpin Road to Shady Grove Church, his pre-
vious objective, he would turn right when he reached Todd's Tavern
and take the Brock Road north to its intersection with the road on which
this second rebel column was advancing. Similarly, now that the plot
had thickened, Sedgwick was told to send one division to join Warren's
turnpike attack and another down the Brock Road to the intersection
Hancock had been assigned to cover. His third division would remain
on guard at Germanna Ford until Burnside's arrival, expected by mid-
day, when it too would come down and get in on the action — which-
ever, if either, fight was still in progress by that time — leaving Burn-
side's four divisions as an available reserve, to be on call if they were
needed. Thus Grant, though he still had no specific information as to
The Forty Days [ 159 ]
the size or composition of either rebel column approaching his open
flank, was determined to strike them both with everything he had.
While couriers went pounding off to deliver these several mes-
sages, Grant and Meade rode a short way down the pike, a bit under
half a mile beyond a boggy little stream called Wilderness Run, and
turned off into the southwest quadrant of the Germanna Plank Road
intersection, where there was a meadow adjoined by a farmhouse be-
longing to a family named Lacy. Headquarters tents were being pitched
there, in accordance with the change in plans, and the two generals
dismounted and climbed a knoll on the far side of the field. Grant took
a seat on a convenient stump, lighted another of the twenty cigars he
distributed among the various pockets of his uniform at the start of
every day, and sat calmly, an imperturbable figure wreathed in tobacco
smoke, waiting for the attack to be launched beyond the heavy screen
of brush at the rim of the clearing. Time dragged, the sun edging slowly
toward meridian, and presently he took a penknife out of his trouser
pocket, picked up a stick, and started to whittle. Snagged by the blade,
the fingertips of his thread gloves began to fray, until at last they were
ruined. He took them off, unbuttoned his coat because of the increasing
heat, and resumed his whittling. At noon, or a little after, a sudden
clatter of stepped-up rifle fire announced that the action had finally
opened about one mile down the turnpike.
At first it was difficult to tell how the thing was going. The
clatter moved westward, diminished briefly, as if it had paused for
breath, then swelled louder than ever and rolled back east for another
pause: after which a similar uproar came from the left front, subsided,
and then was repeated. Along the limited horizon, west and southwest,
the trees began leaking smoke along a line that seemed to conform in
general to the one from which the initial attack had been launched an
hour ago. All that was clear, so far, was that little or nothing had been
gained, although it was fairly certain by now that there were a good
many more graybacks out there in the brush than Meade had supposed
at the outset. Grant kept whittling.
Presently details filtered rearward, brought to the Lacy meadow
by dispatch bearers on lathered horses. Complying with Grant's in-
structions, relayed by Meade, that he was to give no "time for disposi-
tion," Warren had told Brigadier General Charles Griffin, the com-
mander of what had been his rear but now was his lead division, not to
wait for word from the heads of the three divisions assigned to support
him on the flanks — Brigadier General Horatio G. Wright of Sedg-
wick's corps, on the march down from Germanna to go in on his right,
and Brigadier Generals James S. Wadsworth and Samuel W. Crawford
of his own corps, who were countermarching to come up on his left —
but to pitch right into the Confederates, hard and fast, as soon as he
[i6o] THE CIVIL WAR3T1864
got his troops in line astride the pike, trusting that the others would be
there in time to furnish whatever assistance he might need. That was
what he did; but he did so, as it turned out, unsupported in the crisis
that resulted. Wright did not arrive for a full two hours, having
gotten lost in the woods about as soon as he left the road, and Wads-
worth and Crawford only came up in time to get badly mauled them-
selves, floundering around in the brush as if they were involved in a
gigantic and altogether murderous game of blindman's bluff: as indeed
they were — particularly Wadsworth, a Hudson River grandee who,
at fifty-six, was nine years older than any other division commander in
the army. Just now he was feeling the weight of all those years. Try-
ing to navigate by compass in that leafy sea of green, he got badly
turned around and drifted northward so that his naked left was ex-
posed to a sudden descent by Gordon's screaming Georgians, who tore
into it so savagely that the whole division fell back in disorder, the men
crying "Flanked! We're flanked!" as they ran. Crawford caught it
even worse from the rallied Alabamians when he came up, groping
blind after he lost touch with the navigating Wadsworth. A former
army surgeon who had been on duty at Fort Sumter when it fell, he
was thirty-four, the next-to-youngest of Meade's division commanders,
but he looked considerably older after three years of combat, including
a bad wound taken at Antietam. "A tall, chesty, glowering man, with
heavy eyes, a big nose, and bushy whiskers," he habitually wore what
one of his soldiers described as "a turn-out-the-guard expression." His
expression just now, however, was one of outrage. His division had
once been Meade's own, made up entirely of Pennsylvanians, and Craw-
ford was outraged at the heavy and useless losses he had suffered, in-
cluding one veteran regiment captured practically intact when it fled
in the wrong direction and found itself surrounded by grinning rebel
scarecrows when it stumbled to a halt.
Unquestionably though, to judge by individual reaction, the most
outraged man on the field today was Griffin. A hard-case West Pointer
and a veteran of the Mexican War at thirty-eight, he was much admired
by his men, including a brigade of regulars who had followed him
through a lot of fighting over the past two years. An old line artillery-
man, he was especially furious at the loss of a section of guns which had
to be abandoned down the turnpike when his flanks were overlapped
and his troops fell back to avoid being swamped by no less than seven
Confederate brigades. The blame, as he saw it, lay with the com-
manders who had failed to come up on his left and right, and as soon
as he managed to stabilize the line his three brigades had fallen back to,
he got on his horse and galloped off to protest to Meade in person.
Crossing the headquarters meadow, he dismounted and stalked up the
knoll at the far side, fuming and cursing as he came. Meade heard him
out and did what he could to soothe him, although with small success.
The Forty Days [ 161 ]
The air was full of God-damns. Finally, relieved by at least having
vented his spleen, Griffin went back down the knoll, remounted his
horse, and rode off to rejoin his division on the firing line. Grant, who
had stopped whittling for the first time while the tirade was in progress,
got up from his stump and walked over to Meade. He had not quite
caught Griffin's name, but he had never been one to put up with out-of-
channels insubordination, even in the easier-going West. "Who is this
General Gregg?" he asked. "You ought to put him under arrest."
Meade, whose extreme irascibility was masked today by an unaccus-
tomed calm, turned to Grant with the same gentleness he had shown
the angry brigadier. "His name's Griffin, not Gregg," he said, "and
that's only his way of talking." In grizzled contrast to his younger chief,
and towering a full head above him, Meade leaned forward as he spoke
and buttoned up Grant's coat for him, as if in concern that he might
catch cold after being overheated. Grant went back to his stump and
his whittling.
By then it was close to 3 o'clock. Off to the south, although the
sound of it did not get through until Warren's had died down, the
second battle had been shaping up for the past hour. All that was there
at the start was Brigadier General George W. Getty's division of Sedg-
wick's corps, which had come down from Germanna before midday to
take over from a hard-pressed regiment of cavalry the task of delaying
the progress of the second Confederate force, in position astride the
plank road about half a mile from the Brock Road intersection, while
Hancock came up from Todd's Tavern on a march that was much
impeded by V Corps artillery, which had halted to await developments.
Hancock arrived at 2 o'clock, riding at the head of his four-division
column, and when Getty informed him that the graybacks to his
front were commanded by the ever-aggressive A. P. Hill and that he
might have to fall back at any moment under increasing pressure from
such a savage fighter, thus uncovering the crossroad whose loss would
cut the army in two and expose its train to capture or destruction,
Hancock ignored Grant's instructions to forgo time-consuming prepa-
rations and instead put his troops to work improvising crude log
breastworks along the road in rear of the position, north and south of
the plank road intersection, thus to provide them with something on
which to rally in case they were repulsed. Peremptory orders for an
immediate advance put an end to this at about 3.30. Leaving Brigadier
Generals Francis Barlow's and John Gibbon's divisions posted well down
the Brock Road to guard against an attack from the southwest — he
had been warned that Longstreet's corps was on the march, somewhere
off in that direction, though it was not expected to arrive until tomor-
row — Hancock put Major General David Birney's and Brigadier
General Gershom Mott's divisions in line on the right and left of
Getty's and sent them forward with orders to drive the enemy back on
62
THE CIVIL WAR 3T 18 64
II HANCOCK
BARLOW
2 GIBBON
3 BIRNEY
4MOTT
V WARREN
(GRIFFIN
2 ROBINSON
3 CRAWFORD
A IVADSWORTH
VI SEDGWICK
1 WRIGHT
2 GETTY
5 RICKETTS
Parker's Store, three miles from the vital crossroad in their rear, and
thus abolish, for once and for all, this threat to the safe passage of the
army through the Wilderness, together with its train. It was just past
4 o'clock by then, and on second thought, by way of giving more
weight to the blow, he had Gibbon send two of his three brigades to
stiffen the center of the attack which had now begun to roll.
It did not roll far, even though at this stage all that blocked
the path of these 25,000 attackers was a single gray division with fewer
than 7500 in its ranks. Advancing through the tangled brush, the
Federals delivered blind volleys of musketry that lopped the saplings
at breast height, all across their front, and made it nearly impossible,
so heavy and continuous was the fire, for any standing defender to
survive. The trouble was that scarcely a Confederate was standing.
While waiting for a reply to
his offer to go forward, if that
was what Lee wanted, Heth —
like Hancock, who was similarly
engaged at the same time, half
a mile away on the Brock Road
— had had his men dig in and
lie low along the slight, densely
wooded ridge on which they
had halted when the blue resist-
ance stiffened. Prone beneath
solid-seeming sheets of lead that
slashed the leaves and clipped the
breast-high branches, the troops
along the ridge replied with
volleys of their own. Not only
were these as heavy as the ones
the front-rank Federals were
throwing; they were also a good
deal more deadly. Caught thus,
erect and unprotected by any-
thing more substantial than
smoke and foliage, the attackers
suffered cruelly from a foe they could not see. Mott's division, bogged
shoetop-deep in a swamp on the left, directly in front of the ridge,
broke and ran from that first decimating fire, as did other outfits all
along the line. Whole companies, whole regiments fell back in shock
and panic, some of them all the way to the log defenses they had built
an hour ago. There they were met, individually and collectively, with a
curt demand from provost guards with leveled bayonets: "Show blood!"
Those who could not show it were hoicked back into line alongside
the troops who had not bolted, who were still in position, up there in
Parkers
^Mershaw, Field C Umqstreet K z)
ten milts southwest; Picliett (s) detached
The Forty Days \ 163 ]
the bullet-whipped brush, firing blind — "by earsight," it was called —
in the general direction of the rebels lying prone in comparative safety
on their ridge, pumping volley after horrendous volley into the blue
mass down in the boggy swale to their immediate front.
Hancock, a hard hitter, never hit harder than he did here in the
Wilderness today, despite confounding difficulties of terrain far better
suited for defense (once the shock of surprise had been dispelled) than
for attack. A second assault was mounted and delivered, then a third
and a fourth, all with the disadvantage of trying to maintain align-
ment, as well as a precarious sense of direction, while attacking veterans
who had only to lie low and fire as rapidly as they could load their over-
heated rifles. Up at army headquarters, where there was full awareness
of the importance of keeping the Brock Road clear for travel, Meade had
Warren send Wadsworth's division south, across the mile-wide gap
between him and Hancock, with instructions to strike the left flank
of the rebels, fixed in position by headlong pressure from the front.
Hancock meantime was doing all he could to increase that pressure,
having added two of Barlow's four brigades to the struggle. This gave
him close to 30,000 men in his attack force, even after the deduction
of casualties, which were heavy and getting heavier by the minute,
including Brigadier General Alexander Hays, a lifelong friend of
Grant's and one of the heroes of Gettysburg, killed at the head of his
brigade in Birney's division. However, Lee by then had recalled Wilcox
from his attempt to link up with Ewell and close the gap across the
center. He came back fast and went in hard, supporting Heth just as
his flank was about to crumble. This doubled the number of de-
fenders and reduced the odds from three- to two-to-one. Even so, the
issue could not have remained much longer in doubt, except that gather-
ing darkness finally ended the contest. It dwindled by common consent,
then flared up momentarily as Wadsworth finally arrived in the twi-
light after thrashing around in the brush on a three-hour search for the
battle raging furiously one mile to the south. When he came up, in
position at last to wreck the interior rebel flank, Lee had no reserves
to throw in his path except a single Alabama battalion of 125 men, de-
dailed to guard the host of prisoners who had been streaming rearward
ever since the fight began. The Alabamians formed a widespread
skirmish line, leaving the prisoners to the care of a handful of wounded,
and went in yelling for all they were worth, quite as if they had an army
at their backs. Wadsworth stumbled to a halt, apparently convinced
that his jungle-foundered soldiers were about to be swamped by superior
numbers, and hastily took up a stout defensive position on Hancock's
right as night came down.
While both sides turned to attend to such of their wounded as
they could reach — lucky ones, these, compared to others caught be-
tween the lines, calling for help that could not come because the slight-
[164] THE CIVIL WAR»"1864
est movement drew instant volleys from troops made panicky by fear
of a night attack at such close quarters, or trapped by fires that sprang
up and spread rapidly when the night breeze rose and fanned the sparks
in the dry leaves to flames — Grant went to his headquarters tent in
the Lacy meadow to study reports of what had happened today and
to make plans for what he wanted to happen tomorrow. He would, of
course, continue the offensive on both fronts, though his best chance
for a breakthrough seemed to lie with Hancock, who reported that
he would have made one today if darkness had not ended the battle
an hour too soon. Sedgwick, joined late in the day by his third division
under Brigadier General James B. Ricketts, would remain in position
on the right of the northern sector, with Warren, minus Wadsworth,
on the left. These Rve divisions had attacked again near sunset, but
with no greater success than before; Ewell, buttoned up tight in his
intrenchments, would not budge. Tomorrow's attack in this sector
would be made primarily to prevent him from sending reinforcements
down to Hill, who was to be hit with everything Hancock could lay
hands on: his own four divisions, plus one from each of the other three
corps, including Burnside's, which had been arriving all afternoon, too
late for today's fight but in plenty of time for tomorrow's. In addition
to sending one division to Hancock, Burnside would leave another on
guard at Germanna Ford and march the other two down the Germanna
Plank Road tonight, turning off, south of the turnpike intersection, to
move west through the woods for a plunge into the gap between
Warren's left and Hancock's right and a drive against Hill's interior
flank, which he would assail by turning south again, as soon as he was
well into the gap between the two Confederate corps. Such was Grant's
victory formula, compounded tonight for application tomorrow.
Jump-off time, he said, would be at first light, 4 o'clock. Sedg-
wick and Warren, with five divisions, would attack and pin down Ewell,
while Hancock and Burnside, with nine divisions, were overrunning
Hill — and Longstreet too, if he arrived by then and was put into that
portion of the line. All that was known just now was that he was on
the march, somewhere off to the south and west; Hancock was warned
to be on the lookout for him on the far left, in case Lee tried something
foxy in that direction, though Grant was as usual a good deal more in-
tent on what he had in mind to do to the enemy than he was on what
the enemy might or might not do to him. Meade was in full agree-
ment with these orders, as indeed he had been with all orders from
the start, except that he suggested that the jump-off be advanced an
hour to sunrise, 5 o'clock, so that the troops commanders would have a
little daylight time in which to get their men in line for the assault.
Grant considered this briefly, then agreed, and the two turned in, along
with their staffs, to get some sleep for the hard day coming up.
The Forty Days [ 165 ]
Lee too was planning an offensive for tomorrow, and he intended,
moreover, to launch it in the same region Grant had chosen as the
scene of his main effort: in the vicinity of the plank road intersection.
This involved a revision, not of purpose — the Virginian had counted,
all along, on going over to the offensive as soon as his whole army was
at hand — but of method. Formerly Longstreet had been told to pro-
ceed up the Catharpin Road to Todd's Tavern, a position from which
he could turn the Union left, but the daylong need for closing the
tactically dangerous gap between Hill and Ewell now provoked a
change of plans, whereby Old Peter would shift from the Catharpin to
the Plank Road and come up, not on Hill's right, but in his rear; Little
Powell then could sidle northward to connect with Ewell, thus abol-
ishing the gap, while Longstreet took over his position and prepared to
launch, with his own two divisions and Hill's third, a dawn attack de-
signed to crumple Grant's left flank, roll it up, and in conjunction with
Hill and Ewell, who would advance in turn against the Federals to
their front, fling the blue invaders back across the Rapidan. Accordingly,
around 7 o'clock, while Hill's battle was still raging and the outcome
was in doubt, Lee sent Longstreet word of the change in objectives, to-
gether with a guide to insure against going astray on the cross-country
night march he would have to make in order to get from one road to
the other. A message went at the same time to Major General Richard
Anderson, commander of Hill's third division, which had moved from
Orange to Verdiersville today, instructing him to continue his march
up the plank road beyond Parker's Store tonight, in order to be with
Longstreet in plenty of time for the attack at first light tomorrow.
Heth and Wilcox — who could testify to the all-too-probable
truth of Hancock's claim, across the way, that another hour of daylight
would have given him the breakthrough he had been seeking — were
pleased to learn from Hill that Longstreet and Anderson would be up
tonight to relieve their fought-out men. Whether Lee had revised his
previous estimate of the enemy strength or not, Little Powell was con-
vinced that his 15,000 veterans had taken on upwards of 40,000 bluecoats
in the Wilderness today, and he had little patience with the concern of
his two division commanders about the tangled condition of their lines,
which had come so close to buckling under repeated assaults that, in the
words of one witness, "they were like a worm fence, at every angle."
Heth went to Hill and told him flatly: "A skirmish line could drive my
division and Wilcox's, situated as we now are." He proposed that a
new line be drawn, just in rear of their present disordered position, for
them to fall back on before morning, when, as he predicted, "we shall
certainly be attacked." Little Powell would not hear of this, partly
because such a move would have meant abandoning many of the
wounded and also because it would rob his soldiers of their hard-
earned rest. "Longstreet will be up in a few hours," he said. "He will
[166] THE CIVIL WAR3T 1864
form in your front. . . . The men have been marching and fighting all
day and are tired. I don't wish them disturbed." Heth went back to
his troops, but soon returned with Wilcox, who joined him in the pro-
posal that both divisions be withdrawn to a new line. Hill repeated
that he wanted the men to get their sleep between now and midnight,
when Longstreet was expected. They went away, but Heth, whose heart
was heavy with foreboding, came back for still a third time to renew
the argument. This vexed Hill, whose own sleep was being interrupted
now. "Damn it, Heth," he said angrily, "I don't want to hear any more
about it. The men shall not be disturbed." Heth retired for good this
time, though it was already after midnight and Longstreet was ob-
viously behind schedule, i o'clock, 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock passed, and still
there was no news that Old Peter was approaching. Not long before
dawn, the two division commanders sent for a battalion of corps engi-
neers to come forward with picks and shovels in a belated attempt to
complete the neglected intrenchments before they were overrun by the
blue attackers Heth was convinced would come with the sun, if not
sooner.
Back at the Tapp farm, Lee had known since 10 o'clock that the
First Corps would not be up till daylight at the earliest. The young
cavalry officer who had ridden down to the Catharpin Road with
instructions for the change in routes, Major Henry McClellan of Stuart's
staff, had also been charged with giving Longstreet's lead division verbal
orders to press on without delay, thereby assuring an early arrival in
Hill's rear. He left about 7 and returned three hours later, highly indig-
nant, to report to Lee that the commander of that division, Major
General Charles W. Field, a West Pointer and a stickler for regula-
tions — he had lately been promoted and appointed to his post, having
served in Richmond as superintendent of the Bureau of Conscription
since the loss of a leg at Second Manassas, twenty months ago — flatly
declined to accept from a stray cavalryman possibly garbled verbal
orders that were in contradiction to the ones he had received from his
corps commander, which were that he was to rest his men at Richard's
Shop until 1 o'clock in the morning. Then and not until then, he said
stiffly, would the march be resumed. This meant that Old Peter's lead-
ing elements could scarcely arrive before sunup, since the distance from
Richard's Shop was about a dozen miles, two or three of them over
rugged terrain, across fields, through woods, and by roundabout lanes
connecting the two main roads; but Lee seemed oddly unperturbed.
When McClellan offered to ride back with written orders which Field
would have no choice except to obey, the Virginian declined with a
shake of his gray head. "No, Major," he said calmly. "It is now past
10 o'clock, and by the time you could return to General Field and he
could put his division in motion, it would be 1 o'clock. At that hour he
will move."
The Forty Days [167]
Lee returned to his tent for more paper work, including an 1 1
o'clock dispatch informing the Secretary of War of what had occurred
since Grant's crossing of the Rapidan the day before — "By the bless-
ing of God," he wrote of today's hard fight, "we maintained our posi-
tion against every effort until night, when the contest closed" — then
turned in for another four or five hours of sleep before rising to face
what might well be disaster.
He did not mention the possibility of disaster or its cause, either
to Seddon in Richmond or to Hill, whose troops were sleeping helter-
skelter in the brush, in whatever random positions they had occupied
when darkness ended the fighting and they fell asleep on their arms,
many of them too weary to eat the scant rations sent up later in the
evening. Perhaps, like Little Powell, Lee reasoned that rest would do
more for them than would fretting about a situation they could do
but little to repair in the few hours of darkness that remained. In any
case, he left them and their commander undisturbed until dawn began
to filter through the thickets and a popping of rifles, like individual
handclaps, warned that another day of battle had begun: May 6.
Exposed by daylight to this picket fire, the engineers dropped their
picks and shovels, which they had had small chance to use, and scuttled
rearward. Within an hour, sharply at 5 o'clock as the sun was rising,
this intermittent racket merged and grew in abrupt intensity to a steady
clatter, described by one observer as "the noise of a boy running with
a stick pressed against a paling fence, faster and faster until it swelled
into a continuous rattling roar." The Federals were attacking in greater
strength than yesterday, along and down both sides of the plank road,
and after a brief resistance the two Confederate divisions did just what
Heth had said they would do. They broke. Though they did not scatter
in panic or drop their rifles, still they made for the rear, more or less in
a body, some among them firing as they went. "The men seemed to fall
back upon a deliberate conviction that it was impossible to hold the
ground and, of course, foolish to attempt it," one among them later
wrote by way of explanation, adding rather philosophically: "It was
mortifying, but it was only what every veteran has experienced."
Up on Ewell's front the dug-in troops held firm under assault,
but Sedgwick and Warren were accomplishing all that was asked of
them by keeping him from sending reinforcements down to the far end
of the line. Such flaw as there was in the execution of Grant's plan was
in the center. Burnside, ordered to penetrate the rebel gap and descend
on Hill's interior flank, had gotten himself and his two divisions lost
as soon as he left the road last night and struck out through the brush;
he was somewhere rearward now, behind the space between Warren
and Hancock, disoriented and wandering in circles while the conflict
raged, first to his right, then his left, sometimes front and sometimes
rear. Hancock was furious at this dereliction. Shouting to be heard above
[ 168] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
the din on the plank road, he told one of Meade's staff officers that if
those missing 10,000 men could be added to the pressure being exerted,
"we could smash A. P. Hill all to pieces!" In point of fact, he seemed
well on the way to doing it anyhow. Except for the troops with Barlow,
whose division had been reunited down the Brock Road to guard against
a possible flank attack, he had all the men assigned to the main effort
massed and in motion, flushing graybacks as they went. Forty years
old, "a tall, soldierly man with light brown hair and a military jaw," he
had what the staffer described as "the massive features and the heavy
folds round the eye that often mark a man of ability." Elated by the
propitious opening of that portion of the battle in his charge, he made
a handsome figure on horseback, and his elation grew as the attack
continued. Just ahead was the Tapp clearing, and beyond it the white
tops of wagons parked in the Confederate rear. "We are driving them,
sir!" Hancock called proudly to the staff man. "Tell General Meade we
are driving them most beautifully."
Lee was there in the clearing, doing all he could to stiffen what
little was left of Hill's resistance, and so had Longstreet himself been
there, momentarily at least, when the blue assault was launched. He
came riding up just before sunrise, a mile or two in advance of his
column, the head of which had reached Parker's Store by then, and
Hill's chief of staff crossed the Tapp farmyard to welcome him as he
turned off the road. "Ah, General, we have been looking for you since
12 o'clock last night. We expect to be attacked at any moment, and
are not in any shape to resist." Unaccustomed to being reproached by
unstrung colonels, however valid their anxiety, Old Peter looked sternly
down at him. "My troops are not up," he said. "I've ridden ahead — "
At this point the sudden clatter of Hancock's attack erupted out in the
brush, and Longstreet, without waiting to learn more of what had
happened, whirled his horse and galloped back to hurry his two divi-
sions forward. So Lee at least knew that the First Corps would soon be
up. His problem, after sending his adjutant to order the wagon train pre-
pared for withdrawal, was to hang on till these reinforcements got there,
probably within the hour, to shore up Hill's fast-crumbling line.
Presently, though, this began to look like more than he could manage;
Wilcox and Heth, overlapped on both flanks, gave ground rapidly be-
fore a solid mass of attackers, and skulkers began to drift rearward across
the clearing, singly and in groups, some of them turning to fire from
time to time at their pursuers, while others seemed only intent on es-
cape. Their number increased, until finally Lee saw a whole brigade
in full retreat. Moreover, this was not just any brigade; it was Brigadier
General Samuel McGowan's brigade of South Carolinians, Wilcox's
best and one of the finest in the army.
"My God, General McGowan!" Lee exclaimed from horseback,
The Forty Days [169]
breasting the flood of fugitives. "Is this splendid brigade of yours run-
ning like a flock of geese?"
"General, these men are not whipped," McGowan answered,
stung in his pride by this public rebuke. "They only want a place to
form and they will fight as well as they ever did."
But there was the rub. All that was left by now for them to
form on was a battalion of Third Corps artillery, four batteries under
twenty-eight-year-old Lieutenant Colonel William Poague, lined up
along the west side of the clearing which afforded one of the Wilder-
ness's few real fields of fire. The cannoneers stood to their loaded pieces,
waiting for Hill's infantry to fall back far enough to give them a
chance to shoot at the bluecoats in pursuit. However, there was no
time for this; Poague, with Lee's approval, had his guns open at what
was already point-blank range, shaving the heads of the Confederate
retreaters in order to throw their anti-personnel rounds into the enemy
ranks. This took quick effect, particularly near the road, where the
Federals tended to bunch up. Flailed by double-shotted grape and can-
ister, they paused and began to look for cover: seeing which, the
cannoneers stepped up their rate of fire. Lee remained mounted along-
side Poague, who kept his men at their work — "getting the starch
out of our shirts," they called it — without infantry support. This could
not continue long before they would be overrun, but meantime they
were making the most of it. Smoke from the guns drifted back, spar-
kling in the early-morning sunlight, and presently Lee saw through its
rearward swirls a cluster of men running toward him, carrying their
rifles at the ready and shouldering Hill's fugitives aside.
"Who are you, my boys?" he cried as they came up in rear of the
line of bucking guns.
"Texas boys!" they yelled, gathering now in larger numbers, and
Lee knew them: Hood's Texans, his old-time shock troops, now under
Brigadier General John Gregg — the lead brigade of Field's division.
Longstreet was up at last.
"Hurrah for Texas!" Lee shouted. He took off his wide-brimmed
hat and waved it. "Hurrah for Texas!"
No one had ever seen him act this way before, either on or off
the field of battle. And presently, when the guns ceased their fuming
and the Texans started forward, they saw something else they had never
seen: something that froze the cheers in their throats and brought them
to a halt. When Gregg gave the order, "Attention, Texas Brigade! The
eyes of General Lee are upon you. Forward ... march!" Lee rose in
his stirrups and lifted his hat. "Texans always move them," he declared.
They cheered as they stepped out between the guns. "I would charge
hell itself for that old man," a veteran said fervently. Then they saw the
one thing that could stop them. Lee had spurred Traveller forward on
[i 7 o] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
their heels; he intended to go in with them, across the field and after
the bluecoats in the brush. They slacked their pace and left off cheering.
"Lee to the rear!" began to be heard along the line, and some of them
addressed him directly: "Go back, General Lee, go back. We won't go
unless you go back." He was among them now, flushed with excite-
ment, his eyes fixed on the woods ahead. They stopped, and when
an attempt by Gregg to head him off had no effect, a sergeant
reached out and took hold of Traveller's rein, bringing the animal to
a halt. "Lee to the rear! Lee to the rear!" the men were shouting. But
his blood was up; he did not seem to hear them, or even to know that
he and they were no longer in motion. At this point a staff colonel in-
tervened. "General, you've been looking for General Longstreet. There
he is, over yonder." Lee looked and saw, at the far end of the field, the
man he called his war horse. For the first time since he cleared the line
of guns he seemed to become aware that he was involved in something
larger than a charge. Responding to the colonel's suggestion, he turned
Traveller's head and rode in that direction. On the way he passed in rear
of Brigadier General Evander Law's Alabama brigade, about to move
out on the left. "What troops are these?" he asked, and on being told
he called to them: "God bless the Alabamians!" They went forward
with a whoop, alongside the Texans, who were whooping too. "I
thought him at that moment the grandest specimen of manhood I ever
beheld," one among them later wrote. "He looked as though he ought
to have been, and was, the monarch of the world."
Longstreet yielded to no man in his admiration for Lee, yet his
admiration never amounted to idolatry, especially if idolatry included
a willingness to put up with tactical interference. Seeing him thus "off
his balance," he later wrote, he informed him with jocular bluntness, as
soon as he came up, "that his line would be recovered in an hour if he
would permit me to handle the troops, but if my services were not
needed I would like to ride to some place of safety, as it was not quite
comfortable where we were." Lee complied by retiring westward a
short distance with his staff officers, who no doubt were glad to get him
out of there, and Old Peter kept his word, here and on the opposite side
of the plank road as well.
There his other division had been put in line by its commander,
Brigadier General Joseph Kershaw, whose Georgians, South Carolin-
ians, and Mississippians hooted cruelly when Heth's badly shaken
troops fell back through their ranks. "Do you belong to Lee's army?"
they jeered, seeing their old comrades thus for the first time in eight
months. "You don't look like the men we left here. You're worse than
Bragg's men!" Taking over, they stalled Hancock's advance on this
side of the road, while Field was doing the same across the way. Then
the two divisions went forward together against the Federals, who
were wearier and a good deal more disorganized than they had known
The Forty Days [171]
until they were brought to a halt, first by Poague's four rapid-firing
batteries and then by 10,000 newly committed rebels whose appearance
was as sudden as if they had dropped out of the sky. Still, the going was
rough for the First Corps, most of whose members had never fought in
the region west of Fredericksburg before. Some brigades lost heavily,
including the Texans, who went in boasting that they had "put General
Lee under arrest and sent him to the rear." A captured private from
the brigade expressed its collective opinion when his captors asked him
what he thought of this Battle of the Wilderness. "Battle be damned,"
he said hotly. "It aint no battle, it's a worse riot than Chickamauga! At
Chickamauga there was at least a rear, but here there aint neither front
nor rear. It's all a damned mess! And our two armies aint nothing but
howling mobs."
Before 10 o'clock, despite the various impediments of terrain and
the refusal by most of Hancock's men to panic under pressure, Long-
street fulfilled his promise to recover the line that had begun to be lost
at sunrise. Halting there, within half a mile of the Brock Road, he pro-
ceeded to consolidate the position, reinforced presently by Anderson,
whose division arrived while the First Corps was advancing and moved
up in its support. Hill meantime had rallied his other two divisions and
swung them northward, in accordance with Lee's orders, to plug the
gap that had yawned since yesterday between him and Ewell. Finding
it unexploited by the Federals, whose own gap had been enlarged by
Longstreet — Law's whooping Alabamians had struck and scattered
Wadsworth's ill-starred division on Hancock's right, driving the rem-
nant west and north, all the way to the Lacy meadow, and Burnside
was still on his circuitous tour of the brush — Hill's men, willingly
and hurriedly, did what they had failed to do the night before. They
intrenched. Lee's line was now a continuous one, reasonably compact,
and he had all his troops on hand at last, including Ewell's detached
brigade, which arrived at midmorning from Hanover. The time had
come for him to go over to the all-out offensive he had planned to
launch as soon as he managed to bring Grant to a standstill in the
thickets — as he now had done.
"There was a lull all along the line," a regimental commander
later said of this period during which reconnaissance parties went out
and came back and last-minute instructions were delivered: adding, "It
was the ominous silence that precedes the tornado."
Tactically, Grant was in far worse shape than he or anyone else
in the Lacy meadow seemed to know. In addition to the unmanned gap
across his center, he had both flanks in the air. No blue army had ever
remained long in any such attitude, here in Virginia, without suffering
grievously at the hands of Lee for having been so neglectful or inept;
Hooker, for example, had left only one flank open, but his discomfiture
[172] THE CIVIL WAR3^1864
had been complete. Now the same treatment might well be in store for
Grant, on practically that same ground just one year later.
Headquarters had been more or less in a turmoil for the past two
hours, ever since Hancock's attack went into reverse. First, there was
the matter of Burnside's nonarrival, which not only reduced the intended
strength of the main effort but also left it unsupported on the right,
exposing Wadsworth to the catastrophe that ensued. In point of fact,
after all that had happened yesterday, the aging New Yorker — a
brigadier since shortly after First Bull Run, military governor of the
District of Columbia during the tenure of McClellan, whom he had
helped to frustrate, and an unsuccessful candidate for governor of his
home state on the Republican ticket in '62, the year of the Democratic
sweep — had seemed to suspect from the start that today would be no
better. He was feeling his years, and he told an aide he thought perhaps
he ought to turn the command of his division over to someone else and
go to the rear. As it was, however, he stayed and managed, today as
yesterday, to lose his sense of direction in the course of the attack and
came crowding down on the units to his left, creating a jam on the
near side of the plank road and thereby adding to the effectiveness of
Poague's fire from the Tapp farmyard, as well as to the confusion that
prevailed when Law assailed his unprotected right. One of his three
brigades disintegrated without more ado, and Wadsworth, in an attempt
to keep the other two from doing likewise, appealed to them from horse-
back to stand firm; whereupon he was hit in the back of the head and
fell to the ground with a bullet in his brain. His troops ran off and left
him, pursued by the rebels, who gathered him up and took him back to
one of their aid stations. (He died there two days later, having been
stared at by a great many of his enemies, who came for a look at a man
reputed to possess "more wealth than the treasury of the Confederate
government." Rich men were not unusual in the armies of the South,
where the West Point tradition was strong in leading families and no
S3 00 commutation fee could secure exemption from conscription, but
were rarely encountered on the other side, particularly on the firing
line.) Meantime the fallen general's troops continued their flight all
the way to the Lacy meadow, as if they expected to find sanctuary
there with Grant, who sat on his accustomed stump atop the knoll, still
whittling, still wreathed in cigar smoke. Headquarters was alarmed by
their sudden appearance, even though they did not seem to be pursued,
and presently, when long-range shots began to fall in the vicinity, an
anxious staffer, fearful that the meadow was about to be overrun, sug-
gested that it would be prudent to shift the command post rearward.
Grant stopped whittling. "It strikes me it would be better to order up
some artillery and defend the present location," he said quietly. This was
done, although there was nothing the gunners could see in the way of
The Forty Days [ 173 ]
targets, and Hancock bolstered what remained of Wadsworth's division
by sending reinforcements over from the left.
On the right, Sedgwick and Warren had suffered heavy losses in
carrying out their instructions to keep attacking Ewcll's intrenchments
and thus prevent his sending reinforcements down to Hill. This they
had done, and in doing it they had kept him on the defensive. But if
they assumed from this that he would remain so, or that Sedgwick's
outer flank was secure because it was covered by Flat Creek, they
would be disabused before nightfall; Gordon, whose brigade was on
the left, was trying even now to get permission from his superiors to
turn the Federal flank, which he insisted was wide open to such a
maneuver, having scouted it himself. So far, Ewell and Early had
declined to let him try it, being convinced that Burnside's corps was
posted rearward in support. Obviously, Sedgwick's immunity from
attack, based as it was on this misconception by Gordon's superiors, was
going to last no longer than Burnside remained unaccounted for in the
Union order of battle. Once he found his way up to the firing line and
was identified, Ewell and Early would have to abandon their objection
to Gordon's proposal and unleash him, with results that were likely to
be spectacular if Sedgwick's dispositions were as faulty as the Georgian
claimed to have seen with his own eyes.
Just now, however — for Burnside, having spent the past five
hours out of pocket, was to spend another three in the same fashion,
lost to friend and foe alike, before he managed to get where he
belonged — the gravest danger was on the opposite flank, which was
also exposed to being turned or struck end-on. This was due to a
combination of misconceptions, based on erroneous information from
headquarters. Hancock had kept Barlow in position down the Brock
Road all this time, yesterday and today, in expectation that Longstreet
would arrive from that direction. Instead he had come up the plank
road, converting Hill's near rout into a counter offensive; but Hancock
still held Barlow where he was, outside the action, because only two
of Old Peter's divisions, Field's and Kershaw's, had so far been
identified. The third, Pickett's — reported to have been with Long-
street at Gordonsville, though in fact it was south of Richmond —
might be maneuvering for an attack up the Brock Road, perhaps in
conjunction with Anderson's division of Hill's corps, which had also
not yet been accounted for. So Barlow was kept where he was, a mile and
a half from the plank road intersection, to guard against a tangential
strike by these 10,000 missing rebels. Meantime, evidence had accumu-
lated to support the belief that they were already at hand, including
one frantic eyewitness report that they were advancing in mass up the
Brock Road. This was a case of mistaken identity; the advancing mass
turned out to be a herd of Federal convalescents, marching from
[174] THE CIVIL WAR^ 1864
Chancellorsville to rejoin the army by Hancock's roundabout route.
No sooner was this mistake discovered, however, than heavy firing
was heard from down around Todd's Tavern, where the Brock and
Catharpin roads intersected, less than three miles from Barlow's outpost
on the Union left. The assumption was that the cavalry must have en-
countered Pickett's column, coming up from the Catharpin Road, and
was doing what it could to hold him off while Barlow got ready to
receive him. This was partly correct and partly wrong. It was cavalry,
right enough, but that was all it was. The blue troopers were shooting,
not at Pickett (who was perhaps of greater service to his country here
today, though he was not within sixty miles of the battle, than he had
been ten months ago at Gettysburg, leading the charge that would be
known forever after by his name) but at Stuart. Sheridan had served
Grant poorly yesterday by plunging eastward, with two thirds of the
army's cavalry, into the vacuum Stuart had left around Fredericks-
burg when he moved westward to take position on Lee's right. Still
intent on closing with the graybacks, more for the purpose of destroying
them than of finding out what was happening in their rear, Sheridan's
horsemen made such a racket with their rapid-firing carbines that Barlow
thought a large-scale action was in progress, though in fact it was
nothing more than an unprofitable skirmish, which did not result in
the slightest penetration of the cavalry screen Stuart kept tightly drawn
to prevent his adversary from catching even a glimpse of the prepara-
tions now being made for attack, four miles northwest. As it was,
Barlow was so impressed by the uproar down around Todd's Tavern
that he called urgently for reinforcements to help him meet what he
was convinced was coming, and Hancock obliged by sending him two
brigades from the main body, which by then was back on the line it
had left at sunrise.
Hancock had his hands full where he was, holding Longstreet
west of the Brock Road, immediately north and south of the plank
road intersection. For better than five hours now, advancing and re-
treating, the fighting had been as heavy as any he had ever seen, and
so too had his casualties and the expenditure of ammunition. Drummer
boys were pressed into unfamiliar service as stretcher bearers, and
when they got to the rear with their anguished burdens, the stretchers
were loaded with boxes of cartridges for the return to the firing line,
so that, as one reporter wrote, "the struggle shall not cease for want
of ball and powder." Involved as he was in the direction of all this,
blinded by thickets and appealed to simultaneously from the left and
right — Barlow was convinced that he was about to be hit by Pickett,
and Wadsworth's division, adjacent to the unmanned gap across the
army's center, had just come apart at the seams — Hancock was ap-
parently too busy to notice that the contraction of his front in the
vicinity of the crossroad, resulting from his losses and the withdrawal
The Forty Days [ 175 ]
of four brigades to meet the reported dangers on the far left and the
right, had widened to about a mile the brush-choked interval between
the main body and Barlow's outpost position down the road. Conse-
quently, though he was reasonably well protected against a flank
attack by Pickett, who wasn't there, he was not protected at all from
one by Longstreet, who was. His immediate left — as Gordon was
saying of Sedgwick's right, four miles away — was wide open to either
a turning movement or an end-on strike.
Then came the lull, a half-hour breathing space. Hancock spent
it shoring up his line against an expected renewal of Longstreet's
frontal effort to drive him back from the vital crossroad. Atop the knoll
in the Lacy meadow, Grant, with a hole in his center and both flanks
in the air, continued to whittle. Then, around 1 1 o'clock, the storm
broke. Within minutes of the opening shots, according to Meade's
chief of staff, the uproar of the rebel attack "approached the sublime."
"Longstreet, always grand in battle, never shone as he did here,"
a First Corps artillerist said of the general in his conduct of this morn-
ing's fighting on the right. Within three hours of his arrival he intro-
duced tactics into a battle which, up to then, had been little more than
a twenty-hour slugging match, with first one side then the other
surging forward through the brush, only to fall back when momentum
was lost and the enemy took his turn at going over to the offensive.
All attacks had been frontal except for chance encounters, when some
confused unit — a regiment or a brigade or, as in Wadsworth's case,
a division — got turned around, usually in the course of an advance
through blinding thickets, and exposed a naked flank to being torn.
Now Old Peter, who was always at his calmest when the conflict
roared its loudest, undertook to serve a Federal corps, reinforced to a
strength of seven divisions, in that same tearing fashion.
Lee had ordered the army's chief engineer, Major General Martin
L. Smith, to report to Longstreet at about the time the Federals began
to yield the ground they had won from Hill. Sent out to reconnoiter
the Union left, Smith — a forty-four-year-old New-York-born West
Pointer whose most distinguished service to his adopted country up to
now had been at Vicksburg, where he not only laid out and super-
vised the construction of its hilly defenses, but also commanded one of
the divisions that manned them under siege — returned at 10 o'clock
to report that he had found Hancock's flank wide open to attack from
within the mile-wide gap that yawned between his main body and
Barlow's outpost. Moreover, an unfinished and unmapped railroad,
work on which had been abandoned when the war began, afforded an
ideal covered approach to that vulnerable point; troops could be massed
in the brush-screened cut, just where the roadbed made a turn south-
east, perpendicular to the unguarded flank a briery quarter mile away.
[i 7 6] THE CIVIL WAR3T1864
Old Peter's eyes lighted up at the news, but he was no more inclined
to be precipitate here than he had been at Second Manassas when a
similar opportunity arose. He summoned his young chief of staff,
Lieutenant Colonel G. Moxley Sorrel, instructed him to take charge
of a force made up of three brigades, one from each of the three
divisions at hand, and conduct them to the designated point for the
attack. Knowing how likely such maneuvers were to become dis-
organized under the influence of exuberance, he stressed the need for
careful preparation. "Form a good line," he told him, "and then move,
your right pushed forward and turning as much as possible to the left."
Characteristically, before sending him on his way, he added in true First
Corps style: "Hit hard when you start, but don't start until you have
everything ready."
Sorrel assembled the three brigades, headed by Brigadier Generals
William Wofford, G. T. Anderson, and William Mahone, respectively
from Kershaw's, Field's, and Richard Anderson's divisions, and just as
he was about to move out, Colonel John M. Stone of Heth's division,
in position on Longstreet's left, requested permission to add the weight
of his Mississippi brigade to the blow about to be struck. Hill and Heth
were willing, and that made four brigades from as many divisions, a
pair each from two corps, not one of them under a professional
soldier and all in charge of a young staff officer who never before had
commanded troops in action. Sorrel was a former bank clerk, twenty-
six years old, intensely ambitious and strikingly handsome, a Georgian
like his chief, though of French not Dutch extraction. As he set out,
leading this force of about 5000 into the railway cut, then eastward
through its leafy tunnel to the bend where they would mass for the
attack, he knew that his great hour had come and he was determined to
make the most of it, for his own and his country's sake. Old Peter, who
had a great affection for him dating back to First Manassas, watched
him disappear in the woods, then settled back to wait for the uproar
that would signal the launching of the flank assault. He kept his remain-
ing eleven brigades in position astride the plank road, maintaining
frontal contact and preparing to increase the pressure when the time
came. Already he was planning a larger turning movement to follow
the one about to start. Once Hancock's line had been rolled up, the
fronts of the other two Confederate corps would be uncovered in rapid
sequence; Hill's two divisions would join the grand left wheel, and
Ewell's three would drive straight ahead, cutting the Federals off from
the fords by which they had crossed the Rapidan. Obliged to fall back
on Fredericksburg, Grant's army would be cut to pieces, train and
all, as it jammed the narrow Wilderness trails and scattered in the
brush. Anticipation made the wait seem long, though in fact it was
quite brief. At 1 1 o'clock, within half an hour of his setting out, Sorrel's
attack exploded on the Union left and began to roll northward, clatter-
The Forty Days [ 177 ]
ing across the right front of the Confederate position. Longstreet or-
dered his main body forward simultaneously to exploit and enlarge
the panic already evident in the enemy ranks.
The end-on blow was as successful as even Sorrel had dared to
hope it would be. Struck without preamble by a horde of rapid-firing
rebels who came screaming through what up to then had been a
curtain of peaceful green, the first blue unit — a brigade that had just
been withdrawn from the line to catch its breath while the lull was
on — disintegrated on contact, its members taking off in all directions
to escape the sudden onslaught, and though others reacted differently,
having at least had a semblance of warning that something horrendous
was headed in their direction from the left, the result was much the
same in the end, as unit after unit, finding itself under simultaneous
fire from the front and flank, sought to achieve a similar deliverance
from fury. Consternation in such cases was followed by a strangely
deliberate acceptance of the military facts of life, the difference being
that they reacted, not as individuals, but as a group seeking safety in
numbers. A man from one of Gibbon's brigades reported that the first
he knew of a flank attack was when he saw troops from Mott's division,
on his left, trudging rearward in a body. At first, so deliberate was
their step, so oddly sullen their expression, he could not make out what
was happening. " [They] did not seem to me demoralized in manner,"
he declared, "nor did they present the appearance of soldiers moving
under orders, but rather of a throng of armed men returning dis-
satisfied from a muster." The best explanation another observer could
give was that "a large number of troops were about to leave the
service," and apparently they were doing all they could to leave it
alive. One thing at least was clear to a staff officer who watched them
slogging rearward, oblivious to pleas and threats alike. "They had
fought all they meant to fight for the present," he said, "and there
was an end to it." Hancock himself put it simplest, in a statement years
later to Longstreet: "You rolled me up like a wet blanket."
Elation on the Confederate side was correspondingly great, and
it too was a sort of mass reaction. Here, the cheering troops perceived
as soon as the flank attack began to roll, was another Chancellorsville
in the making. Moreover, they were aware of the highly encouraging
difference that, instead of launching their turning movement with a
scant two hours of daylight left for its exploitation, as Jackson's men
had done, they now had a substantial eight or nine such hours: enough,
surely, to complete the destruction already under way. Not that they
wasted time, simply because so much of it was available; Sorrel had
carried out his orders with speed and precision. Wofford and Mahone
were abreast in front, respectively on the left and right, supported by
G. T. Anderson and Stone, whose added pressure shattered what little
resistance was encountered or by-passed in the course of the advance.
[178] THE CIVIL WAR 3T 1864
Within less than an hour they had driven northward all the way to the
plank road; some of WofTord's Georgians, in fact, plunged eagerly
across it, intent on the chase, though Mahone's Virginians called a halt
at that point, in accordance with instructions. When Sorrel rode up he
found the plank road unobstructed all the way to its intersection with
the Brock Road, where the displaced and rattled Federals were taking
shelter behind the breastworks Hancock had had them build the day
before. From the opposite direction he saw Longstreet and his staff
riding toward him on the plank road, accompanied by several unit
commanders to whom the burly lieutenant general was apparently
giving directions for the follow-up assault. They made up a sizeable
cavalcade, and Sorrel could see from their manner, their gestures
and expressions as they rode, that they shared the exuberance he was
feeling at the success of his first experience as a leader of men in
battle.
Their high spirits were voiced by Brigadier General Micah
Jenkins, the twenty-eight-year-old commander of a brigade in Field's
division, who had just been informed that his troops would play a
major role in the follow-up attack. "I am happy," the young South
Carolina aristocrat told Longstreet, excited by the prospect of enlarging
the gains already made. "J have felt despair for the cause for some
months, but now I am relieved, and feel assured that we will put the
enemy back across the Rapidan before night." When Sorrel came up
Jenkins embraced and congratulated him warmly. "We will smash them
now," he said.
Old Peter thought so, too. Engineer Smith had returned from a
second reconnaissance of the Union left to report that a second turning
movement, designed to flank the rallying bluecoats out of their breast-
works along the Brock Road, was altogether as feasible as the first.
Just then, however, as the cavalcade continued its ride east to within
musket range of the Brock Road intersection, there was a sudden
spatter of fire from the woods to the right front; some of Mahone's men
were shooting at some of Wofford's, having mistaken them for Federals
when they came hurrying back across the plank road to take their
proper place in line. Aggressive as always, Longstreet whirled his horse
in that direction, apparently intending to stop the undisciplined firing.
Others followed his example — including Joe Kershaw, who had ridden
forward to confer with Wofford on the condition of his detached
brigade — and were met by a heavier volley from the Virginians in
the woods. Four men were hit: a courier and a staff captain, both of
whom were killed instantly, Micah Jenkins, who died a few hours later
with a bullet in his brain, and Longstreet. "Friends! They are friends/"
Kershaw shouted in a voice that rang above the clatter and the groans,
and almost at once Mahone's veterans ceased firing and hurried out
of the woods to express their regret for what had happened.
The Forty Days [ 179 ]
By then solicitous hands were helping the wounded lieutenant
general to dismount. Hit solidly by a bullet that passed through the base
of his neck and lodged in his right shoulder, he had been lifted straight
up by the impact and had come down hard, his right arm hanging
useless, though he managed to stay in the saddle, bleeding heavily,
until his companions were there to ease him to the ground, the upper
part of his body propped against the trunk of a roadside tree. Exultation
turned to dismay as word spread rapidly through the Wilderness that
Old Peter had been hit. All down the line, men's thoughts were more
than ever of Chancellorsville, but with the bitter irony of remembering
that Jackson too had been shot by his own soldiers, less than four
miles up the road through these same woods, at the climax of a suc-
cessful flank attack. As for Longstreet, his thoughts were neither on
the past nor on the present, despite his pain. His concern was for the
immediate future, the follow-up assault that would complete his victory.
Field being the ranking division commander present in the corps,
Longstreet blew the bloody foam from his mouth to say to Sorrel:
"Tell General Field to take command, and move forward with the
whole force and gain the Brock Road." Soon his staff physician was
there to tend his wounds, and when Lee arrived he told him, in such
detail as his shaken vocal cords allowed, of his plan for turning the
Federals out of their new position. By now a stretcher had been
brought. He was lifted onto it, his hat placed over his face to shield
his eyes, and carried back down the plank road to a waiting ambulance.
On the way, when he heard troops by the roadside saying, "He is dead.
They are only telling us he is wounded," he raised his hat from his
face with his usable hand. The answering cheers, he declared long
afterward, served to ease his pain somewhat on the jolting rearward
journey.
A wandering artillery major, on a fruitless search for a decent
gun position, came up just as the ambulance moved off. Later he wrote
of what he saw and felt. Members of the general's staff, "literally
bowed down with grief," were all around the vehicle; "One, I re-
member, stood upon the rear step of the ambulance, seeming to desire
to be as near him as possible. All of them were in tears." The doctor
had said that Longstreet's wounds were not necessarily fatal, but they
recalled that the prognosis had been even more favorable in Jackson's
case right up to the day he died, a year ago next week. Though he had
never really liked Old Peter, the artillerist wanted to see for himself
what his condition was. For one thing, the procession's resemblance
to a funeral cortege lent credence to a rumor that the general was dead.
"I rode up to the ambulance and looked in. They had taken off Long-
street's hat and coat and boots. The blood had paled out of his face
and its somewhat gross aspect was gone. I noticed how white and
dome-like his great forehead looked and, with scarcely less reverent
8o
THE CIVIL WAR^ 1864
admiration, how spotless white his socks and his fine gauze undervest,
save where the black red gore from his breast and shoulder had stained
it. While I gazed at his massive frame, lying so still except when it
rocked inertly with the lurch of the vehicle, his eyelids frayed apart
till I could see a delicate line of blue between them, and then he very
quietly moved his unwounded arm and, with his thumb and two
fingers, carefully lifted the saturated undershirt from his chest, holding
it up a moment, and heaved a deep sigh. He is not dead, I said to my-
self, and he is calm and entirely master of the situation. He is both
greater and more attractive than I have heretofore thought him."
Back up the road, at the scene of the wounding, Field was doing
what he could to carry out his orders to "take command, and move
forward." But this was by no means as easy a task as Longstreet seemed
to think. Other disruptive accidents, like the one that had just cost
the corps its chief, were apt to follow if the main body, still in line
astride the plank road, and Sorrel's flankers, drawn up facing it, were
left to fight with their fronts at right angles. Lee ordered a postpone-
ment of the follow-up assault until the lines were readjusted. This was
done, although the process was a slow one. Not only was the confusion
greater than had been thought, it had also been increased by the loss
of Jenkins and Old Peter. Four mortal hours, from noon to 4 o'clock,
were required to get the troops untangled and into satisfactory positions
for attack, and when they went forward at 4.15 they found that
Hancock, too, had made good use of the time afforded for adjustments.
He had strengthened his breastworks, brought up reinforcements, and
posted a secondary line in support of the first. Worst of all (or best,
depending on the point of view) he had shored up and realigned
his outer flank, which the at-
tackers found no longer dan-
gling in the air. At a couple of
points the Confederates achieved
a penetration — one, where the
log breastworks caught fire,
forcing the defenders to aban-
don them, and Jenkins's Caro-
linians came leaping through the
flames, intent on avenging the
fall of their young brigadier —
but in both cases supporting
troops came up and restored the
line by driving them out again:
proof, if any such was needed,
that seven divisions, snug behind breastworks and with both flanks secure
(Burnside had come up at last, midway through the four-hour lull, and
gone into position on Hancock's right) were not to be driven, or even
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The Forty Days [ 181 ]
budged, by three divisions attacking head-on through bullet-flailed
brush. An hour of such righting was quite enough to show that nothing
more was going to be accomplished here. It was time — indeed, almost
past time — to look elsewhere: meaning in Ewell's direction, up on the
opposite flank.
All day, though he had had no chance to go in person, Lee had
been sending messages to the Second Corps, urging an offensive in that
quarter to relieve the pressure on the First or, if that was impracticable,
the detachment of reinforcements to strengthen the offensive on the
right. Invariably Ewell had replied that he could do neither. There was
no fit opening for an attack; he needed all his troops to maintain his
position astride the turnpike. When Lee arrived at 5.30 asking, "Can-
not something be done on this flank?" Ewell said again that he be-
lieved it would be unwise to assault the Federals in their intrenchments,
and he was supported in this by Early, who was at corps headquarters
when Lee rode up. Gordon was also there, intending to renew his
daylong plea that he be unleashed, and when his two superiors finished
protesting that there was nothing to be done, he presumed to appeal
to the army commander himself for permission to strike at the enemy
flank, which he insisted had been wide open to attack for more than
eight hours now. Ewell and Early repeated their objections, based on
the conviction that Burnside was posted in Sedgwick's rear to forestall
such a move. Lee, who knew that Burnside was in front of Hill, wasted
no more time on reproaches, although, as Gordon later wrote, "his
silence and grim looks . . . revealed his thoughts almost as plainly as
words could have done." He simply ordered the attack to be made at
once.
It was launched at straight-up 6 o'clock, and within the limitations
of the little daylight time remaining — sunset came at 6.50 and darkness
followed quickly in the thickets of the Wilderness — it was altogether
as successful as Gordon, for the past nine hours, had been telling
Ewell and Early it would be. With the support of the brigade that had
arrived that morning from Hanover, North Carolinians under twenty-
seven-year-old Brigadier General Robert D. Johnston, the Georgians
struck and scattered Ricketts's unwary flank brigade and captured its
commander, Brigadier General Truman Seymour. Seymour had led a
division in the ill-starred Florida campaign, and after being whipped
at Olustee had returned to Virginia to head a brigade whose members
were known in both armies as "Milroy's weary boys," a description
applied two years ago, after Stonewall Jackson gave them the run-
around in the Shenandoah Valley, and confirmed last year when Ewell
encountered them near Winchester on his way to Gettysburg. Weary
or not, they broke badly again today and spread panic through the rest
of the division, as well as through part of Wright's division, which was
next in line and which also had a brigade commander scooped up by
[ i8z ] THE CIVIL WAR3®" 1864
the rebels in the confusion. This was Brigadier General Alexander
Shaler, a Connecticut-born New Yorker whose capture was especially
welcome because he had recently been in charge of the prison for
Confederate officers on Johnson's Island in Sandusky Bay, where
winters were cold and blankets few; now he would get a taste of
prison life from the inside, looking out, instead of from the outside,
looking in. Seymour and Shaler, for all their lofty rank, were only two
among some 600 Federals taken captive in the attack, while about as
many more were killed or wounded, bringing Sedgwick's total loss to
well over a thousand in one hour. Gordon himself lost only about fifty
in the course of what his men referred to, ever afterwards, as their
"finest frolic." The blue right flank was "rolled up" for more than a
mile before dusk put an end to the advance and obliged the Georgians
and Carolinians, who by then had plunged all the way to the Germanna
Plank Road, to pull back with their prisoners, their booty from the over-
run camps, and their conviction that an earlier attack, in Gordon's
word's, "would have resulted in a decided disaster to the whole right
wing of General Grant's army, if not in its entire disorganization."
Lee was inclined to think so, too, especially if the attack on this
flank, against Sedgwick, had been delivered at the same time as Long-
street's against Hancock, on the other; in which case the indications
were that Grant would have been overwhelmed and routed, not merely
discomfited and bled down another one percent. An earlier visit to the
left by the army commander would no doubt have resulted in an
earlier attack, but Lee had come as soon as he felt he could leave the
critical right, where the contest had been touch-and-go since sunrise.
The trouble was that he could not be everywhere at once, despite the
need for him to do just that. Although this impossible need had grown
more pressing ever since the death of Stonewall Jackson, today it had
become downright acute. Longstreet's departure left his corps in the
hands of a newly promoted major general who had been with it less
than three months, none of the time in combat, and whose deskbound
year in Richmond seemed to have made him utterly inflexible at a
time when flexibility was among the highest virtues. Hill's failing
health, worse today than yesterday, and likely to be still worse to-
morrow, obviously required him to take a sick leave that would deprive
the army, however briefly, of the most aggressive of its corps com-
manders. It was harder, even, to think of Lee without A. P. Hill than
it was to think of him without Longstreet, for Hill had never been
detached. As for Ewell, although by ordinary standards he had done
well today and yesterday, holding his own against the odds, he seemed
incapable of doing one whit more than was required by specific orders;
Ewell in the Wilderness, unable to bring himself to unleash Gordon
despite repeated pleas from headquarters that so7net\\mg be attempted
in that direction, was disturbingly like Ewell at Gettysburg, where
The Forty Days [ 183 ]
his indecisiveness had cost the army its one best chance for a quick
victory in what, instead, turned out to be a bloody three-day battle
that ended in retreat. . . . All this might well have been heavy on Lee's
mind as he rode southward, three miles through the twilight, to the
Tapp farm. He was faced, at this most critical juncture, with a crisis
of command: a crisis that would have to be resolved if the Army of
Northern Virginia — at the close of only the second day of fighting,
in what promised to be the longest and grimmest of its campaigns —
was to survive the continuing confrontation, here in the depths of the
Wilderness, with an enemy force roughly twice its size, superbly
equipped, and still in possession of the main artery leading southeast,
through the thickets and beyond into open country, where the tactical
odds would lengthen and the capital itself would be in danger of being
taken, either by sudden assault or inexorable maneuver.
All around him, as he dismounted in front of his tent in the Tapp
farmyard, was confusion. East and north, out in the jungle where the
battle had raged for two incredibly savage days, the moans of the
wounded, blue and gray, were heightened to screams of terror when a
brisk wind sprang up, shortly after dark, and fanned random smoulder-
ing embers into flames that spread faster through the underbrush than
an injured man could crawl. Dead pines, their sap long dried to rosin,
burned like twenty-foot torches, and the low clouds took on an eerie
yellow cast, as if they reflected the glow from molten sulphur on the
floor of hell. The roar of wind-whipped flames through crackling
brush was punctuated from time to time by a clatter resembling the
sudden clash of pickets, as groups of disabled men from both sides,
huddled together against a common danger, were engulfed by the
inferno and the paper-wrapped charges in their pockets or cartridge
boxes caught fire and exploded. While stretcher bearers and volunteers
did what they could to rescue all the wounded they could reach,
others along the Confederate line of battle — including those Third
Corps veterans who had thought they were too tired for such exertion
the night before — worked hard to strengthen their defenses for a re-
newal of the contest at first light tomorrow. They expected it, and so did
their commander. Less soundly beaten, tactically, and with no greater
losses, Hooker had pulled back across the river. But neither Lee nor
his soldiers thought it likely that Grant would do what Fighting Joe had
done; at least not yet. Judging their new opponent by his western
reputation, as well as by his aggressive performance over the past two
days, they believed he would stay and fight.
Next to a retreat, which he did not expect, Lee preferred a
Federal attack, and that was what he had his men prepare for. If Grant
was to be beaten further, to and beyond the point at which he would
have no choice except to pull back across the river, it would have to
come as the result of a bloody, morale-shattering repulse. In any case,
[184] THE CIVIL WAR3T 1864
the next move was up to the invader. Today's abortive follow-up assault
by the First Corps, launched after the long delay occasioned in part
by the fall of its commander, had shown only too clearly that the
Confederates, whatever their successes when they caught the enemy off
balance, lacked the strength to drive an opponent who was not only
twice their size but was also braced for the shock in well-prepared
intrenchments — and there could be no doubt that the Federals were
as hard at work on their defenses, left and right and center, as the gray-
backs were on their side of the line. Obliged as he was, now that all
chances for surprise had been exhausted, to rule out a resumption of the
offensive by his badly outnumbered army, Lee's decision not to
attack amounted to a surrender of the initiative. This was a dangerous
procedure against an adversary as nimble as Grant had shown himself
to be in the campaign that brought Vicksburg under siege, but Lee had
no choice. His hope, as he turned in for the night, was that Grant,
despite his freedom to maneuver, would continue to forget his Vicks-
burg method and hold instead to the pattern of headlong assault he had
followed so far in Virginia. That might lead to his repulse, and another
repulse, if decisive enough, might lead to his destruction. The alterna-
tive for Lee, who had no such freedom to maneuver, was stalemate
and defeat.
This second day of battle in the Wilderness had been Grant's
hardest since the opening day at Shiloh, where his army and his reputa-
tion had also been threatened with destruction. Here as there, however
— so long, at least, as the fighting was in progress — he bore the strain
unruffled and "gave his orders calmly and coherently," one witness
noted, "without any external sign of undue tension or agitation." In-
ternally, a brief sequel was to show, he was a good deal more upset
than he appeared, but outwardly, as he continued to sit on his stump
atop the knoll in the Lacy meadow, smoking and whittling the critical
hours away, he seemed altogether imperturbable. When word came,
shortly before noon, that Hancock's flank had been turned and the
left half of his army was in imminent danger of being routed, his re-
action was to send more troops in that direction, together with addi-
tional supplies of ammunition, followed at 3 o'clock by orders for a
counterattack to be launched at 6 to recover the lost ground and assure
the holding of the Brock Road leading south. As it turned out, Hancock
was himself assaulted a second time, nearly two hours before that,
and had to use up so much of the ammunition in repelling the attack
that not enough was left for compliance with the order. Besides, Grant
by then was faced with an even graver crisis on his right. Sedgwick
too had been flanked and was being routed, he was told, by a rebel
force that had penetrated all the way to the Germanna Plank Road,
The Forty Days [ 185 ]
cutting the army off from its nearest escape hatch back across the
Rapidan.
Meade was a steadying influence, in this case as in others. "Non-
sense," he snorted when a pair of flustered staffers came riding in from
the crumpled flank after sundown to report that all was lost in that
direction, including all hope of deliverance from the trap the rebels
had sprung on Sedgwick and were about to enlarge in order to snap
up everything in blue. "Nonsense! If they have broken our lines they
can do nothing more tonight." He had confidence in John Sedgwick,
the least excitable of his corps commanders, and he showed it by send-
ing reinforcements from the center to help shore up the tottered right.
Grant approved, of course, and had an even stronger reaction to an
officer of higher rank who came crying that this second flank assault
meant the end of the northern army unless it found some way to get out
from under the blow about to fall. "This is a crisis that cannot be looked
upon too seriously," he declared. "I know Lee's methods well by past
experience. He will throw his whole army between us and the Rapidan,
and cut us off completely from our communications." Grant was not a
curser, but his patience had run out. He got up from the stump, took
the cigar out of his mouth, and turned on this latest in the series of
prophets of doom and idolators of his opponent. "Oh, I am heartily
tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do," he said testily. "Some
of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double
somersault and land in our rear and on both our flanks at the same
time. Go back to your command and try to think what we are going to
do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do."
Further reports of havoc on the right were received with the same
firmness, the same quick rejection of all notions of defeat, although —
as Rawlins told a friend who rode over to headquarters to see him later
that evening — "the coming of officer after officer with additional de-
tails soon made it apparent that the general was confronted by the
greatest crisis in his life." By nightfall, however, Meade's assessment
was confirmed; Sedgwick established a new and stronger line, half a
mile south and east of the one he had lost to Gordon's flankers, who
withdrew in the twilight from their position astride the road leading
back to Germanna Ford. Then, and not until then, did the general-in-
chief show the full effect of the strain he had been under, all this day
and most of the day before. He broke. Yet even this was done with a
degree of circumspection and detachment highly characteristic of the
man. Not only was his personal collapse resisted until after the damage
to both flanks had been repaired and the tactical danger had passed;
it also occurred in the privacy of his quarters, rather than in the presence
of his staff or gossip-hungry visitors. "When all proper measures had
been taken," Rawlins confided, "Grant went into his tent, threw him-
[186] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
self face downward on his cot, and gave way to the greatest emotion."
He wept, and though the chief of staff , who followed him into the tent,
declared that he had "never before seen him so deeply moved" and
that "nothing could be more certain than that he was stirred to the
very depths of his soul," he also observed that Grant gave way to the
strain "without uttering any word of doubt or discouragement." An-
other witness, a captain attached to Meade's headquarters — Charles F.
Adams, Jr, son and namesake of the ambassador — put it stronger. "I
never saw a man so agitated in my life," he said.
However violent the breakdown, the giving way to hysteria at this
point, it appeared that Grant wept more from the relief of tension
(after all, both flanks were well shored up by then) than out of con-
tinuing desperation. In any case it was soon over. When Rawlins's friend,
Brigadier General James H. Wilson — a friend of Grant's as well,
formerly a member of his military family and recently appointed by
him to command one of Sheridan's cavalry divisions — reached head-
quarters about 9 o'clock, less than an hour after the collapse Rawlins
presently described, he found the general "surrounded by his staff in
a state of perfect composure," as if nothing at all had happened. And
in fact nothing had: nothing that mattered, anyhow. Unlike Hooker,
who broke inside as a result of similar frustrations, Grant broke outside,
and then only in the privacy of his tent. He cracked, but the crack
healed so quickly that it had no effect whatever on the military
situation, then or later. Whereas Hooker had reacted by falling back
across the river, such a course was no more in Grant's mind now than
it had been that morning, before sunup, when he was accosted by a
journalist who was about to leave for Washington to file a story on the
first day's fighting. Asked if he had any message for the authorities
there, Grant, whose usual procedure was to hold off sending word of
his progress in battle until the news was good, thought it over briefly,
then replied: "If you see the President, tell him, from me, that, what-
ever happens, there will be no turning back."
Late that evening another journalist, New York Herald cor-
respondent Sylvanus Cadwallader, was reassured to find that Grant
still felt that way about the matter, despite the tactical disappointments
of the day just past. Seated on opposite sides of a smouldering head-
quarters campfire, these two — the reporter because he was too de-
pressed for sleep, and the general, he presumed, for the same reason —
were the last to turn in for the night. Formerly of the Chicago Times,
Cadwallader had been with Grant for nearly two years now, through
the greatest of his triumphs, as well as through a two-day drunk up
the Yazoo last summer, and for the first time, here in the Wilderness
tonight, he began, as he said afterward, "to question the grounds of
my faith in him. . . . We had waged two days of murderous battle, and
had but little to show for it. Judged by comparative losses, it had been
The Forty Days [ 187 ]
disastrous to the Union cause. We had been compelled by General Lee
to fight him on a field of his own choosing, with the certainty of losing
at least two men to his one, until he could be dislodged and driven from
his vantage ground. [Yet] we had gained scarcely a rod of the battle-
field at the close of the two days' contest." He wondered, as a result
of this disconsolate review of the situation, whether he had followed
Grant all this long way, through the conquest of Vicksburg and the
deliverance of Chattanooga, only "to record his defeat and overthrow"
when he came up against Lee in the Virginia thickets. Musing thus
beside the dying embers of the campfire, he looked across its low glow
at the lieutenant general, who seemed to be musing too. "His hat was
drawn down over his face, the high collar of an old blue army overcoat
turned up above his ears, one leg crossed over the other knee, eyes on
the ashes in front." Only the fitful crossing and recrossing of his legs
indicated that he was not asleep, and Cadwallader supposed that the
general's thoughts were as gloomy as his own — until at last Grant spoke
and disabused him of the notion. He began what the reporter termed "a
pleasant chatty conversation upon indifferent subjects," none of which
had anything to do with the fighting today or yesterday. As he got
up from his chair to go to bed, however, he spoke briefly of "the sharp
work General Lee had been giving us for a couple of days," then
turned and went into his tent to get some sleep. That was all. But now that
Cadwallader realized that the general had not been sharing them, he
found that all his gloomy thoughts were gone. Grant opposed by Lee
in Virginia, he perceived, was the same Grant he had known in Mis-
sissippi and Tennessee, where Pemberton and Bragg had been de-
feated. "It was the grandest mental sunburst of my life," he declared
years later, looking back on the effect this abrupt realization had had
on his state of mind from that time forward. "I had suddenly emerged
from the slough of despond, to the solid bedrock of unwavering faith."
In the course of the next twenty hours or so — May 7 now, a
Saturday — the whole army experienced a like sequence of reactions,
from utter doubt to mental sunburst. Reconnaissance parties, working
their way along and across the charred, smoky corridors last night's
fires had left, found the rebels "fidgety and quick to shoot" but content,
it seemed, to stay tightly buttoned up in the breastworks they had
built or improved since yesterday. Lee preferred receiving to delivering
an attack, and Grant apparently felt the same, since he issued no orders
directing that one be made. For this the troops were duly thankful,
especially those who had had a close-up look at the enemy lines, but they
were also puzzled. The Federal choice seemed limited to attack or re-
treat, and they had not thought that Grant, despite the drubbing he
had received these past two days, would give up quite this early.
Still, word soon came that the pontoon bridges had been taken up at
Germanna and relaid at Ely's Ford to hasten the passage of the ambu-
[i88] THECIVIL WAR^1864
lance train with the wounded, who were to be sent by rail to Wash-
ington. This meant that a withdrawal of the army, whether by that
route or through Fredericksburg, would have to proceed by way of
Chancellorsville, the hub where roads from the south and west con-
verged to continue north and east. Swiftly now the conviction grew
that everything blue would be headed in that direction after sundown.
Sure enough, such guns as had found positions for direct support of the
infantry — including those on the knoll in the Lacy meadow — were
limbered and started rearward that afternoon, obviously to avoid jam-
ming the roads that night, and in this the men saw confirmation of their
worst judgments and suspicions. Grant, for all his western bulldog
reputation, was merely another Pope, another Hooker, at best another
Meade. They had been through this before; they recognized the signs.
"Most of us thought it was another Chancellorsville," a Massachusetts
infantryman would remember, while a Pennsylvania cavalryman re-
corded that his comrades used a homlier term to describe the predicted
movement. They called it "another skedaddle."
If the Chancellorsville parallel was obvious — both battles had
been waged in the same thicket, so to speak, between the same two
armies, at the same time of year, and against the same Confederate
commander — it was also, at this stage, disturbingly apt. By every
tactical standard, although the earlier contest was often held up as a
model of Federal ineptitude, the second was even worse-fought than
the first. Hooker had had one flank turned; Grant had both. Hooker
had achieved at least a measure of surprise in the opening stage of his
campaign; Grant achieved none. Indeed, the latter had been surprised
himself, while on a march designed to avoid battle on the very ground
where this one raged for two horrendous days, not only without profit
to the invaders, but also at a cost so disproportionate that it emphasized
the wisdom of his original intention to avoid a confrontation on this
terrain. Moreover, it was in the three-way assessment of casualties,
Hooker's and Lee's, along with his own, that the comparison became
least flattering. Grant lost 17,666 killed and wounded, captured and
missing — about four hundred more than Hooker — while Lee, whose
victory a year ago had cost him nearly 13,000 casualties, was losing a
scant 7800, considerably fewer than half the number he inflicted. Here
the comparison tended to break down, however, because for anything
like comparable losses, North and South, it was necessary to go back
to Fredericksburg, the most one-sided of all the large-scale Confederate
triumphs. In plain fact, up to the point of obliging Grant to throw
in the sponge and pull back across the river, Lee had never beaten an
adversary so soundly as he had beaten this one in the course of the
past two days.
What it all boiled down to was that Grant was whipped, and
soundly whipped, if he would only admit it by retreating: which in
The Forty Days [189]
turn was only a way of saying that he had not been whipped at all.
"Whatever happens, there will be no turning back," he had said, and
he would hold to that. The midafternoon displacement of the guns
deployed along the Union line of battle was in preparation for a
march, just as the troops assumed, but not in the direction they sup-
posed. No more willing to accept a stalemate than he was to accept
defeat, he would shift his ground, and in doing so he would hold to the
offensive; he would move, not north toward Washington, but south
toward Richmond, obliging Lee to conform if he was to protect the
capital in his rear. Grant thus clung to the initiative Lee surrendered
when he had exhausted all his chances for surprise. Now it was Grant's
turn to try again for a surprise, and he planned accordingly.
The objective was Spotsylvania Courthouse, less than a dozen miles
down the Brock Road from the turnpike intersection. With an early
start, to be made as soon as darkness screened the movement from
the rebels in their works across the way, it was not too much to expect
that the leading elements would be in position there by dawn, plying
shovels and swinging axes in the construction of fortifications which
Lee, when he caught up at last, would be obliged to storm, even if
the storming meant the destruction of his army, because they would
stand between him and the capital whose protection was his prime
concern. Warren would have the lead and would go all the way
tonight, marching down the Brock Road across the rear of Hancock,
who would fall in behind, once Warren had passed, and stop at Todd's
Tavern, where he would guard the rear and slow the progress of the
rebels if they attempted to follow by this route. Sedgwick would move
east on the turnpike to Chancellorsville, then south by the road past
Piney Branch Church to its junction with the Brock Road at Alsop,
between Todd's Tavern and Spotsylvania, close in Warren's rear and
also within supporting distance of Hancock. Burnside would follow
Sedgwick after taking the plank road to Chancellorsville, but would call
a halt at Piney Branch Church to protect the trains and the reserve ar-
tillery, which were to assemble at that point. Sheridan's troopers would
probe the darkness in advance of both columns, and he was directed to
patrol the western flank in strength, in order "to keep the corps
commanders advised in time of the approach of the enemy." Warren
and Sedgwick would move out at 8.30, Hancock and Burnside as soon
thereafter as the roads were clear. The emphasis was on silence and
speed, both highly desirable factors in a maneuver designed to outfox
old man Lee.
Meade issued the march order at 3 o'clock, in compliance with
earlier instructions from Grant, and when the guns pulled out soon
afterward, taking a five-hour lead to clear the roads for the infantry
that night, the troops along the line of battle drew their conclusions
and went on exchanging occasional long-range shots with the gray-
[i 9 o] THECIVIL WAR^1864
backs while awaiting their turn to join what they were convinced was
a retreat. Soon after dark the expected orders came; Warren's and
Sedgwick's veterans slung their packs, fell in quietly on the Brock Road
and the turnpike, and set out. To the surprise of the V Corps men, the
march was south, in rear of Hancock's portion of the line. At first
they thought that this was done to get them onto the plank road, leading
east to Chancellorsville, but when they slogged past the intersection
they knew that what they were headed for was not the Rapidan or the
Rappahannock, but another battle somewhere south, beyond the un-
suspecting rebel flank. Formerly glum, the column now began to buzz
with talk. Packs were lighter; the step quickened; spirits rose with
the growing realization that they were stealing another march on old
man Lee. Then came cheers, as a group on horseback — "Give way,
give way to the right," one of the riders kept calling to the soldiers
on the road — doubled the column at a fast walk, equipment jingling.
In the lead was Grant, a vague, stoop-shouldered figure, undersized-
looking on Cincinnati, the largest of his mounts; the other horsemen
were his staff. Cincinnati pranced and sidled, tossing his head at the
sudden cheering, and the general, who had his hands full getting the
big animal quieted down, told his companions to pass the word for the
cheers to stop, lest they give the movement away to the Confederates
sleeping behind their breastworks in the woods half a mile to the west.
The cheering stopped, but not the buzz of excitement, the elation men
felt at seeing their commander take the lead in an advance they had
supposed was a retreat. They stepped out smartly; Todd's Tavern was
just ahead, a little beyond the midway point on the march to Spotsyl-
vania.
Up on the turnpike, where Sedgwick's troops were marching, the
glad reaction was delayed until the head of the column had covered
the gloomy half dozen miles to Chancellorsville. "The men seemed
aged," a cannoneer noted as he watched them slog past a roadside
artillery park. Weary from two days of savage fighting and two nights
of practically no sleep, dejected by the notion that they were adding
still another to the long list of retreats the army had made in the past
three years, they plodded heavy-footed and heavy-hearted, scuffing
their shoes in the dust on the pike leading eastward. Beyond Chancellors-
ville, just ahead, the road forked. A turn to the left, which they ex-
pected, meant recrossing the river at Ely's Ford, probably to undergo
another reorganization under another new commander who would
lead them, in the fullness of time, into another battle that would end
in another retreat; that was the all-too-familiar pattern, so endless in
repetition that at times it seemed a full account of the army's activities
in the Old Dominion could be spanned in four short words, "Bull Run:
da capo." But now a murmur, swelling rapidly to a chatter, began to
move back down the column from its head, and presently each man
The Forty Days [ 191 ]
could see for himself that the turn, beyond the ruins of the Chancellor
mansion, had been to the right. They were headed south, not north;
they were advancing, not retreating; Grant was giving them another go
at Lee. And though on sober second thought a man might be of at
least two minds about this, as a welcome or a dread thing to be facing,
the immediate reaction was elation. There were cheers and even a few
tossed caps, and long afterwards men were to say that, for them, this
had been the high point of the war.
"Our spirits rose," one among them would recall. "We marched
free. The men begin to sing That night we were happy."
X 2 X
Lee w T as marching too, by then, having divined once more his ad-
versary's intention. That morning, after riding the length of his Wilder-
ness line and finding it strangely quiet — in contrast, that is, to the
fury of the past two days, when better than 25,000 men had been shot
or captured, blue and gray, along that four-mile stretch of tangled
woodland — he drew rein on the far left to talk with Gordon, who
supposed from Grant's lack of aggressiveness that he was about to
retreat. "Grant is not going to retreat," Lee told him. "He will move
his army to Spotsylvania." Surprised, the Georgian asked if there was
any evidence that the Federals were moving in that direction. "Not at
all, not at all," Lee said as he turned Traveller's head to ride back down
the line. "But that is the next point at which the armies will meet.
Spotsylvania is now General Grant's best strategic point."
There was, as he said, no indication that Grant was moving, but
there was at least negative evidence that when he did move — as
obviously he would have to do, in lieu of assaulting the Wilderness in-
trenchments, before he used up the supplies in his train — it would not
be back across the Rapidan; Ewell had sent word, shortly after sunup,
that the Federals were dismantling their pontoon bridges at Germanna,
and though Ely's Ford was still available it seemed unlikely that they
would give up either if they intended to retire to the north bank. That
left Fredericksburg as a possible escape route, and in fact there were
reports from cavalry scouts that wagon traffic was heavy in that
direction. But there was also a report from Stuart, waiting for Lee
when he got back to the Widow Tapp's, that the Union cavalry had re-
turned to Todd's Tavern this morning, in strength enough to drive the
Confederate horsemen out and hold the place against all efforts to retake
it. Todd's Tavern was down the Brock Road, midway between Grant's
present position and Spotsylvania, which lay in the angle between the
Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac and the Virginia Central rail-
roads and offered an excellent approach to Hanover Junction, where
[ i 9 2 ] THECIVIL WAR35-1864
the two lines crossed en route to Richmond from the north and west,
both of them vital to the subsistence of Lee's army. Spotsylvania then,
as Lee told Gordon, was his adversary's "best strategic point," if what
he wanted was either to steal the lead in a race for Richmond or to take
up a stout defensive position which Lee would be obliged to attack,
whatever the tactical disadvantages, not only because it would sever his
lines of supply, but also because it lay between him and the capital whose
protection was his primary concern.
As evidence, this was far from conclusive, but it was persuasive
enough to cause him to summon Brigadier General William N. Pendle-
ton, the fifty-four-year-old former Episcopal rector who served as his
chief of artillery, and instruct him to begin at once the cutting of a
road through the woods, due south from the army's right flank on the
Orange Plank Road, down to Shady Grove Church on the Catharpin
Road — the midpoint for Lee, as Todd's Tavern, which was also on the
Catharpin Road, was for Grant — to be used as soon as the first hard
evidence reached headquarters that his opponent had taken, or was about
to take, the first step in the race for Spotsylvania. The new road, if it
was finished in time, would shorten the march by doing away with the
need to backtrack down the plank road to Parker's Store before turning
south; but this was small comfort alongside the knowledge that Grant
even then would have a shorter route, a better road to travel all the way,
and the advantage of deciding when the race would begin or whether,
indeed, it would be run at all.
Another, and possibly greater, disadvantage lay in the fact that the
lead corps on the march would be the First, since its position was on the
right and therefore closest to the objective. Normally — as in the case
of the movement into the Wilderness earlier this week — one or both of
the other two corps, composed for the most part of Jackson's famed
"foot cavalry," sought out the foe or rounded his flank to set him up
for the Sunday punch methodical Old Peter would deliver when he
came up in turn. Moreover, the corps was now to be commanded by a
general, forty-two-year-old Richard Anderson, whose reputation had
never been one for dash or fire and whose performance over the past
year under Hill had been undistinguished at best, while at worst it had
been a good deal less than that. At Gettysburg, for example, the kindest
thing that could be said of the easy-going South Carolinian's lack of
aggressiveness was that it had been due to sloth. His earlier record, made
in the days when he commanded first a brigade and then a division under
Longstreet, had been better, and this was Lee's main reason, together
with the consideration that he was the senior major general with the
army, for giving the post to him instead of Early, whom Lee otherwise
preferred. A former member of the corps, which Early was not — Field
was of recent appointment and Kershaw was still a brigadier — Ander-
son would be welcomed back by the officers and men of the two divi-
The Forty Days [ 193 ]
sions he would command, while his Third Corps division would pass into
the capable hands of Mahone, the army's senior brigadier. Yet this was
perhaps the greatest of all gambles, the appointment of genial, un-
inspired Dick Anderson to replace his most dependable lieutenant at a
time when dash and fire, both of which were conspicuous by their
absence from his record, seemed likely to be the decisive factors in a
contest that would begin at any moment and had Richmond for the
prize. The fact that Lee was more or less obliged to take that gamble
was one measure of the extent to which attrition was wearing down the
army in his charge.
That afternoon he saw that still another such change was in the
offing. Riding his line for the second time that day, he stopped off at
Third Corps headquarters, which had been set up in a deserted house
about midway between the plank road and the turnpike, and found
A. P. Hill looking paler and sicker than ever. Though red-bearded Little
Powell was unwilling to relinquish command at this critical juncture, it
was evident that he soon would be obliged to do so. This meant that,
once more — with Anderson transferred and Heth and Wilcox in-
sufficiently seasoned — a temporary successor would have to be found
outside a corps whose regular chief was incapacitated. In this case, how-
ever, the problem was simplified by having been faced beforehand,
although in another connection; Jubal Early, runner-up as a candidate
for command of the First Corps, would be brought in from the Second
to lead the Third, at least until Hill recovered from the ailment he would
not yet admit was grave enough to require him to step down. One
dividend of this arrangement, similar to the one that had given Ander-
son's division to Mahone, was that Early's division could pass to Gordon,
for whom Lee felt a growing admiration because of his performance
yesterday. Lee's conversation with Little Powell was interrupted about
4 o'clock by a staff colonel who came down from the attic of the house,
where he had established an observation post by ripping some shingles
from the roof, to report on something he had seen with the aid of a
powerful marine glass trained on what he believed was Grant's head-
quarters, a bit under two miles across the way. A number of heavy guns,
held in reserve there all through the fighting, had just pulled out and
headed south down the Brock Road, toward the Confederate right.
Though Grant's dead were still thickly strewn in the woods in
front of his line, along with a few surviving wounded, and though none
of the blue infantry had yet shown any sign of preparing for a shift, Lee
took this limited artillery displacement as the first step in the race for
Spotsylvania, which lay in the direction the guns had gone. Accordingly,
he returned at once to the Tapp farm and issued orders for Anderson to
march that night, taking Pendleton's just-cut southward trace through
the woods to Shady Grove Church, then eastward across the Po River to
Spotsylvania, which he was to hold against all comers: provided, of
[194] THE CIVIL WAR^* 1864
course, that he got there first. The new corps commander's instructions
were for him to withdraw his two divisions from their present lines
as soon as darkness masked the movement from the enemy, then give the
troops a few hours' rest and sleep before setting out, at 3 o'clock in the
morning, on the race for the objective a dozen miles away. Ewell and
Hill were told to follow, in that order, as soon as they judged that the
situation in their front would justify withdrawal.
In accordance with these instructions, Anderson pulled back about
9 o'clock, but finding no suitable rest area in the immediate rear — fires
had sprung up again in the smouldering brush, fanned alive, as on the
past two nights, by the early evening breeze — he set out at once, down
Pendleton's trace, with the intention of making a bivouac farther south,
outside the smoky battle zone, in which the men could get some rest
between then and 3 a.m., the designated hour for the start of the march.
He had not gone far, however, before he abandoned the notion of
making any considerable halt at all. For one thing, there simply was no
usable stopping place this side of Shady Grove, down along the fringes
of the Wilderness, and for another the condition of the newly built
"road," stump-pocked and cluttered with fallen trunks and limbs, was
so miserable that the rate of march along it in the dark could scarcely
be much better than a mile-an-hour crawl. He perceived that if he was
to win the race for Spotsylvania he would need every minute of the
four or five hours he would gain by keeping moving instead of halting
in accordance with Lee's order; so he kept moving. Eager to do well on
his first assignment as a corps commander, Anderson here rendered Lee
and the Confederacy the greatest service of his career.
Jeb Stuart too had one of his great days, perhaps his finest, although
the action promised little of the glory he had chased in former times.
His three cavalry divisions, under Major Generals Wade Hampton,
Fitzhugh Lee, and W. H. F. Lee — the first was a wealthy South
Carolina planter-sportsman, fifteen years older at forty-six than his
cinnamon-bearded chief, while the second and third, Virginians both,
were respectively the commanding general's twenty-eight-year-old
nephew and twenty-seven-year-old son — were scattered about the
landscape to undertake the double task of protecting the Confederate
march and impeding that of the Federals. There were six brigades, two
in each division. Stuart assigned half of these to accompany the gray
column, shielding its flank and clearing its front, while the other three
moved out ahead to block and bedevil the bluecoats who were slogging
southeast on a parallel route, a couple of densely wooded miles away.
Brigadier General Thomas Rosser, detached from Hampton, led his
brigade directly to Spotsylvania, under instructions to hold the place,
if possible, until Anderson arrived. Fitz Lee meantime turned northwest,
up the Brock Road, to give his full attention to the Federals moving
down it: two brigades of mounted men opposing a four-division corps
The Forty Days
[•95]
of infantry preceded by a cavalry division half again larger than his
own. Near Todd's Tavern he put his troopers to work in the darkness,
felling trees to obstruct the road as they withdrew. This gave the blue
marchers almost as hard a time as their opponents were having on the
crude trace across the way, and presently they had an added problem
the Confederates did not have. When daylight began to filter through
the thickets, the graybacks began to take potshots at the head and flanks
of the Federal column, bringing it to a stumbling halt from time to time
while details moved cautiously forward to flush the rebel marksmen
out of their ambuscades. This continued, down past Alsop, to within
two miles of Spotsylvania. There at last, beyond the fringes of the
Wilderness and on comparatively open ground where he could bring
his horse artillery into play, Fitz Lee had his dismounted men pile fence
rails for a barricade and get down behind it, there in the dust of the road
and the grass of the adjoining fields, for a last-ditch fight while couriers
set out to bring Anderson cross-country to join in the defense. So far it
had been cavalry against cavalry, and Fitz had managed to hold his own,
despite the Union advantage of numbers and rapid-fire weapons. Sooner
[196] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
or later, however, the blue troopers would be replaced by infantry,
brought forward Grant-style in a solid mass to overlap and overrun his
flimsy breastwork. Unless Anderson came up fast and first, there would
be nothing substantial between the Federals and Spotsylvania; Grant
would have won the race whose prize was Richmond.
The sun by then was an hour high, and Anderson's two divisions,
having covered nine miles on their all-night march out of the Wilderness,
were ending an hour-long breakfast halt in the open fields, half a mile
short of the Po and within about three miles of their objective. Sustained
and heartened by the meal, such as it was — a frizzled chunk of fatty
bacon, a piece of hardtack warmed and softened in the grease, and a cup
of "coffee" boiled from roasted peanuts: poor fare, by any ordinary
standards, but quite as much as they were accustomed to (and con-
siderably more, in any case, than Warren's road-worn men received
across the way) — the troops resumed their eastward march across the
Po. Kershaw's division had the lead. About halfway to Spotsylvania, as
he drew near a peculiar roadside dwelling built of squared logs and
referred to locally as the Block House, he was met by a cavalry courier
urging speed in the final heat of the race; Fitz Lee needed help, and he
needed it quick. Fortified by the meager Sunday breakfast, the two front
brigades quickened their step and hurried a mile northward, across the
fields, to where the dismounted troopers were making their last-ditch
stand on the Brock Road. "Run for our rail piles!" a cavalryman shouted
as the men of the leading regiment came up. "The Federal infantry will
reach them first if you don't run! "
They did run, and barely made it. Crouching behind the hastily
improvised works, they opened fire on the advancing bluecoats at a
range of sixty yards and blasted them back, at least for the moment.
Thanks to Lee and Anderson, as well as to Stuart and Fitzhugh Lee —
not to mention their own stout legs — they had won the race, although
by a margin of less than a minute.
Whether it would stay won was another matter. Apparently not;
for while the Federal infantry, recovering from the shock of having en-
countered more than cavalry in defense of the stacked rails, was massing
for a heavier assault, Stuart sent word that Rosser's brigade had been
driven out of Spotsylvania by a division of blue troopers who came surg-
ing down the road from Fredericksburg. Calm despite this evidence that
the race had been lost after all, Anderson rerouted Kershaw's other two
brigades, instructing them to proceed at once to the courthouse and
fling the Federals out before they had time to intrench or bring in
reinforcements. Field's division was coming up by now, and Anderson
got the men into line on Kershaw's left, just in time to repulse a second
and much heavier attack, which otherwise would have turned his west-
ern flank. No sooner had this been done than word came from the south
that the blue horsemen had withdrawn from Spotsylvania of their own
The Forty Days [ 197 ]
accord, apparently in the belief that they were escaping from a trap.
Anderson at once summoned Kershaw's two detached brigades to rejoin
him, leaving the defense of the town to Stuart, who by now had brought
Fitz Lee down to help Rosser prevent a return by the rapid-firing
Federals, in case they got their nerve back. Kershaw's men came hurry-
ing up the Brock Road in time to extend his right and share in the re-
pulse of a still heavier third assault by the Union infantry. This time,
though they were punished even more cruelly in the course of their
advance across the open fields and down the road, the bluecoats did not
scatter or fall back as far as they had done before; they took up a semi-
circular position, just beyond easy rifle range of the defenders, and be-
gan to intrench.
This last was something the Confederates had been doing all
along. Familiar enough with Grant's method by now to expect that at
least one more all-out attack would be made on their line before the
Union commander would be satisfied that it could not be shattered, they
worked with picks and shovels and axes, bayonets and frying pans, tin
cups and anything else that came to hand, improving and extending the
fence-rail "works" they had inherited from Fitz Lee. By the time the
sun swung past the overhead and the third assault had been repulsed, the
artillery-studded defenses, extending about one mile west and half a
mile east of the Brock Road, roughly a mile and a half from Spotsylvania,
had grown as formidable as if they had been occupied for days. Across
the way, however, in the woods and fields beyond the line the Federals
were at work on, more blue troops were coming up and massing south
of Alsop, obviously in preparation for a fourth assault, to be launched
with greater numbers and on a broader front. Anderson's two divisions
had fought Warren's four to a standstill, but now that Sedgwick's three
were being added to the weight that Grant could bring to bear, the odds
seemed overwhelming. About 2.30 the commanding general arrived,
having ridden across the Po ahead of Ewell, whose corps by now was
passing Shady Grove Church, a good two hours from the field of fight.
Informed of the situation, Lee sent word for Ewell to hasten his march.
This was no easy thing to ask of men who were trudging wearily
through heat that was more like June than May, but fortunately the
weather seemed to be having an even more lethargic effect on the
Federals, who, unlike Ewell, had been marching all the previous night.
It was 5 o'clock before they completed their leaden-legged dispositions
and started forward. By then, Ewell's lead division had arrived and gone
into position on Anderson's right, in time to block the attack on that
flank and assist in driving the bluecoats back upon their works. It was
smartly done, and that ended the fighting for the day.
Lee turned in early, rounding out a busy, fateful Sunday. Rising
at 3 o'clock next morning — May 9; just one week ago today, although
it seemed a great deal longer, he had stood on Clark's Mountain, ex-
[198] THE CIVIL WAR»"1864
tended a gauntleted hand, and told his assembled generals: "Grant will
cross by one of those fords" — he wired the President of his success in
frustrating the designs of the Army of the Potomac by winning the race
for Spotsylvania: "We have succeeded so far in keeping on the front
flank of that army, and impeding its progress, without a general engage-
ment, which I will not bring on unless a favorable opportunity offers, or
as a last resort. Every attack made upon us has been repelled and con-
siderable damage done to the enemy." He expected the attacks to be
renewed today, but he had little doubt of being able to withstand them,
so long as the Federals held to the headlong methods they had favored
on three of the past four days. A. P. Hill's corps, under Early — Hill
had broken down at last, too sick to mount a horse, though he insisted
on riding along in an ambulance in order to be with his men — was on
the march even now, under instructions to come up on Ewell's right.
With his army united and intrenched, dispositions complete and both
flanks snug, Lee feared nothing the blue force could do, at least on this
front, and he said as much in the telegram this morning. "With the
blessing of God," he told Davis, "I trust we shall be able to prevent Gen-
eral Grant from reaching Richmond."
On the Union side, the trouble the leading elements had en-
countered in losing the race for Spotsylvania was compounded, in about
equal parts, of weariness and Sheridan. Or perhaps it just came down
to a prevalent loss of temper; weariness made tempers short, and Sheri-
dan's was short enough already. In any case, after the elation that came
with finding they were advancing, not retreating, the troops settled
down to an ill-regulated march — stop and go, but mostly stop — that
soon became what one of Sedgwick's men described as "a medley of phan-
tasmagoria." Down on the Brock Road, tunneling southeast through the
blackness, Warren's dust-choked marchers had it worse, for though
the total distance was less, their progress was jerkier, mainly because of
the cavalry up front, which seemed not only to have no definite notion
of where it was going, but also to be in no hurry whatever to get there.
One delay of about an hour, for example, was occasioned by an all-out
fistfight between two cavalry regiments, one composed of veterans who
effected a forcible exchange of their run-down horses for the well-
groomed mounts of the other, made up of recruits who were not so
green as to take such treatment without protest, even though the protest
accomplished nothing except a prolongation of the delay. All this was
short of Todd's Tavern, the midpoint of the march, where the real
jam-up began.
Sheridan, like Stuart except that he began the campaign with
13,000 sabers, as compared to the Confederate 8500, had three divisions
in his charge. One of these, James Wilson's, he ordered to move rounda-
bout by the Fredericksburg road to Spotsylvania, while the other two,
The Forty Days [ 199 ]
under Brigadier Generals Alfred Torbert and David Gregg, moved out
in front of Warren's infantry to block the crossings of the Po before
the rebels got there. So he intended. As all too often happened, however,
someone failed to get the word — in this case, two somcones: Gregg and
Torbert. Reaching Todd's Tavern around midnight, Aleade and his
escort found the infantry column stalled and the crossroad jammed with
Gregg's rroopers, held up in turn by Torbert's, who were waiting for
orders on the road beyond. Neither had been told what to do, and
neither was doing anything at all. Aleade got them moving by telling
Gregg to proceed down the Catharpin Road toward Corbin's Bridge,
where he would cover the wooded approaches from Parker's Store, and
Torbert (or rather his senior brigadier, Wesley Merritt; Torbert was
sick tonight) to remain on the Brock Road, clearing the way to Spotsyl-
vania for the infantry and sending one brigade to the Block House,
where it would stand in the path of any rebels on the march from
Shady Grove. After issuing these instructions Meade sent word of them
to Sheridan, wherever he might be, and rode back to get Warren on the
move again. By now it was past 1 a.m. and the going was even slower
than before. Up ahead, in the woods beyond the tavern, Alerritt's
troopers found the narrow road obstructed and enemy horsemen taking
shots at them, out of the darkness, when they dismounted by lantern
light to drag the just-felled timber from their path. This got worse as
the march continued, especially for the infantry, with sudden starts and
stops, races to close the resultant gaps, and long waits for the column to
lurch into motion, segment by jangled segment. The first glimmers of
daylight, so fervently hoped for in the gloom, only made things worse
by improving the marksmanship of the snipers in the brush. Just before
sunup Sheridan himself came pounding onto the scene on his big black
horse. Fuming at Aleade's highhanded "interference," which seemed
to him to have exposed the cavalry to piecemeal destruction by scatter-
ing it about the countryside, he sent word for Wilson to withdraw at
once from Spotsylvania, lest he be trapped there without adequate sup-
port when the rebel infantry arrived. Aleantime the dismounted gray-
backs continued to snipe at the head of the column, toppling riders
from their saddles. Beyond Alsop, within two miles of the courthouse
— where, for all he knew, Wilson was being cut to pieces by superior
numbers before he could pull out — Sheridan was galled even more by
having to call on Warren's infantry to come forward with their bayonets
and pry Fitz Lee's stubborn troopers out of their fence-rail barricade,
which had proved too formidable for Alerritt's frazzled cavalry to storm.
Chafed by the delays and aggravations, Warren was determined,
now that Sheridan had his horsemen out of the way, to settle the issue
before the defenders had time to strengthen their position on the low
ridge just ahead, barely a mile and a half from the objective of his
disjointed nightlong march. He told Brigadier General John C. Robin-
[ 2oo ] THE CIVIL WAR3P-1864
son, whose division had the lead, to attack as fast as his men could make
it down the road. Weary, outdone, and unfed as they were, wobbly on
their legs for lack of sleep, this wasn't very fast; but it was fast enough,
as the thing developed, to accomplish their destruction in short order.
Robinson, a large, hairy New Yorker with an outsized beard and
shaggy brows, a crusty manner, and a solid reputation earned in prac-
tically all of the major eastern battles, was at forty-seven Wadsworth's
successor as the oldest division commander in the army. He studied the
terrain, peering briefly out across a shallow valley, scarped along its
bottom and lightly timbered, then up the gentle slope on its far side to
where the graybacks crouched behind the fence rails they had stacked
along the thickly wooded crest, about a quarter mile away. The scene
had a certain bucolic charm, particularly by contrast with the smother-
ing hug of the Wilderness, but Robinson found the situation tactically
unpromising and he said as much to Warren, asking for time to bring
up his three strung-out brigades and mass them before launching the
assault. Warren said no, there was nothing across the way but dis-
mounted cavalry; go in now, with the brigade at hand, and go in hard.
This Robinson did, as hard at least as his winded men could manage
after crossing the gullied valley and wheezing up the incline, only to
have the rebel line explode in their faces, a scant sixty yards away. In
quality and volume — a sudden, heavy bank of flame-stabbed smoke,
jetting up and out, and a rattling clatter much too loud for carbines —
the fire left no doubt that the line was occupied, not by cavalry, as the
attackers had been informed when they set out, but by infantry who met
them with massed volleys and blasted them back down the slope, a good
deal faster than they had climbed it on their way to the explosion.
Nor was that the worst of the affair. By now the second brigade,
four regiments of Maryland troops whose enlistments were to expire
before the month was out, had come up and begun its descent into the
valley, coincident with the arrival of Anderson's corps artillery on the
ridge ahead. Startled to find the first wave of attackers in retreat from
momentary contact with the rebels, the second was caught and churned
up fearfully by a deluge of projectiles. The Marylanders broke, scram-
bling rearward in a race with the comrades they had intended to support.
Dismayed and angered, Robinson hurried forward to rally them in per-
son, but went down with a bullet through one knee. His third brigade
fared no better, being struck in the flank and scattered by a savage
counterattack, launched about as soon as it came up. This brought the
casualty total to just under 1200 killed and wounded in less than an
hour, while as many more were fugitives and stragglers, captured or
otherwise unaccounted for. Robinson's knee wound cost him his leg,
which was taken off that night. He was out of the war for keeps. And
so, as another result of this brief engagement, was his division. It was
disbanded next day, the remnants of its three cut-up brigades being
The Forty Days [ 201 ]
distributed among the other divisions of the corps. Demoralized or not,
these reinforcements were badly needed by all three, for they had
suffered cruelly in the wake of Robinson's fiasco; Anderson's second
division had arrived by then to strengthen the rebel line against the
Federals, who were committed division by division, as fast as they came
up, and division by division were repulsed. By the time Meade arrived,
around midday, Warren had done his worst. He had to admit that he
could not get over or around the Confederate intrenchments with what
was left of his corps. Meade told him to hold what he had, then sum-
moned Sedgwick from his reserve position, north of Alsop, to add the
weight of his three divisions to the attack.
This took time — five hours, in all; Sedgwick's men were weary
too — but the interim was livened, at any rate for the gossip-hungry
clerks and staff, by a personality clash. Sheridan dropped by army head-
quarters, still fuming about last night's ''interference," and Meade, losing
his famous temper at last, retorted hotly that the cavalry had been doing
less than had been expected of it ever since the campaign opened. That
the charge was true did not make it any more acceptable to Sheridan,
who replied, bristling, that he considered the remark a calculated insult.
Meade recovered his balance for a moment. "I didn't mean that," he said
earnestly, placing one hand on the cavalryman's shoulder in a concilia-
tory gesture. Sheridan stepped back out of reach ("All the Hotspur in
his nature was aroused," a staff observer later wrote) and continued his
protest. If the cavalry had done less than had been hoped for, he de-
clared, it was not his fault, but Meade's; Adeade had countermanded
his orders, interfered with his tactical dispositions, and worst of all had
kept his troopers hobbled by assigning them such unprofitable and dis-
tractive tasks as guarding the slow-plodding trains and providing escorts
for the brass. If results were what Meade wanted, he should let the
cavalry function as it was meant to function — on its own, as a compact
hard-hitting body. Give him a free rein, Sheridan said, and he would
tackle Jeb Stuart on his own ground, deep in the Confederate rear, and
whip him out of his boots. The argument continued, both men getting
madder by the minute, until Meade at last decided there was only one
way to resolve their differences. He went to Grant.
Three days ago, the general-in-chief's reaction to a similar con-
frontation had been decisive. "You ought to put him under arrest,"
he had said of the riled-up Griffin. Today though, having heard Meade
out, he seemed more amused than angered: especially by the bandy-
legged cavalryman's reported claim that he would whip Jeb Stuart
out of his boots if Meade would only turn him loose. "Did Sheridan
say that?" he asked. Meade nodded. "Well," Grant said, "he generally
knows what he's talking about. Let him start right out and do it."
Meade, having thus been taught the difference between eastern and
western insubordination, returned to his own headquarters and issued
[202 ] THE CIVIL WAR3T 1864
the order; Sheridan would take off next morning, with all three of
his divisions, on a maneuver designed to provoke Stuart into hand-
to-hand combat by threatening the capital in his rear. Meantime Sedg-
wick was coming up. By 5 o'clock he had his three divisions in line
alongside what was left of Warren's four, and all seven went forward,
more or less together, in a final attempt to turn the day's disjointed
fighting into a Union victory by taking possession of Spotsylvania, a
mile and a half beyond the rebel works. It failed, as the earlier attacks
had failed, because Lee again managed to get enough of his veterans —
in this case, Ewell's lead division — up to the critical point in time to
prevent a breakthrough. His losses had been light today, while Meade's
had been comparatively heavy. "The ground was new to everyone, and
the troops were tired," Meade's chief of staff explained.
For Grant, who smoked as he watched the sunset repulse, the
day had been a grievous disappointment. Not only had he failed to
pass Lee's front, but the resultant tactical situation in which he now
found himself seemed to favor the defensive at least as much as had
been the case in the one he abandoned, just last night, in the belief that
it offered him little or no chance to achieve the Cannae he was seek-
ing. Moreover, though he said that he left the Wilderness because he
saw no profit in assaulting the works Lee's men had thrown up in the
brush, the fortifications here were even more formidable, laid out on
dominant ground between unfordable rivers, and getting stronger by the
hour. Still smoking, he looked out across the shallow valley where so
many of Warren's men had fallen — tousled rag-doll shapes becoming
indistinguishable as the daylight faded into dusk — then turned, as
imperturbable as ever, and rode back to his tent, there to make a
study of the situation, based on such information as had been gathered.
Today's reconnaissance (for that was all it came to, in the end)
had been costly, and next morning it grew more so, although nothing
so patently wasteful as a repetition of yesterday's headlong approach
to the problem was attempted. While Hancock and Burnside were on
the march, summoned to come up on the right and left, Warren and
Sedgwick limited their activities to improving their intrenchments and
making a cautious investigation of the Confederate position. Restricted
in scope by the absence of the cavalry, which had taken off soon after
sunrise to challenge Stuart, this last was a gingerly business at best.
Rebel marksmen, equipped with imported Whitworth rifles mounting
telescopic sights, were quick to draw a bead on anything blue that
moved, especially if it had a glint of brass about the shoulders. More-
over, in addition to this lack of respect for rank, they seemed to
have none for the supposed reduction of accuracy by distance, with
the result that there was a good deal of ducking and dodging on the
Union side, even though the range was sometimes as great as half a
mile. This not only interfered with work, it was also thought to be
The Forty Days [ 203 ]
detrimental to discipline and morale. John Sedgwick looked at it that
way, for one, and reproved his troops for flinching from a danger so
remote. "What? Men dodging this way for single bullets?" he ex-
claimed when he saw one outfit react in such a manner to a far-off
sniper. "What will you do when they open fire along the whole line? I
am ashamed of you. They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance."
The soldiers wanted to believe him, partly because they admired him
so — "Uncle John," they called him with affection — but the flesh,
being thus exposed, was weak; they continued to flinch at the crack
of the sharpshooter's rifle, even though it was a good 800 yards away,
and at the quick, unnerving whiplash of near misses, which seemed to
part the hair of every man at once. "I'm ashamed of you, dodging that
way," Sedgwick said again, laughing, and repeated: "They couldn't
hit an elephant at this distance." Next time the glass-sighted Whitworth
cracked, a couple of minutes later, Sedgwick's chief of staff was startled
to see the fifty-year-old general stiffen, as if in profound surprise, and
slowly turn his head to show blood spurting from a half-inch hole just
under his left eye. He pitched forward, taking the unbraced colonel
down with him, and though the doctors did what they could to help,
they could not staunch or even slow the steady spurt of blood from
the neat new hole beside his cheekbone. He smiled strangely, as if to
acknowledge the dark humor of what had turned out to be his last re-
mark, and did not speak again. Within a few minutes he was dead.
Sudden as it was, his death was a knee-buckling shock to the men
of his corps, who had made him the best-loved general in the army.
Besides, when corps commanders started toppling, alive one minute
and dead the next, struck down as if by a bolt of blue-sky lightning,
who was safe? All down the line, from brigadiers to privates, spirits
were heavy with intimations of mortality. Sorrowfully, the staff carried
his body back to army headquarters and laid it in a bower of ever-
greens beside the road, there to receive the salute of passing troops till
nightfall, when he began the journey north to Cornwall Hollow, his
home in the Connecticut Berkshires. Nor was the grieving limited to
those who had served under him, or even under the same flag today;
R. E. Lee, across the way, was saddened by this final news of his old
friend. Meade wept, and Grant himself was stunned when he heard
that Sedgwick had been hit. "Is he really dead?" he asked. Later, after
characterizing the fallen general as one who "was never at fault when
serious work was to be done," he told his staff that Sedgwick's loss
was worse for him than the loss of a whole division. For the present,
though, he found it hard to accept the fact that he was gone. "Is he
really dead?" he asked again.
One fact was clear, in any case, and this was that a great many men
of various ranks, now alive, were likely to be dead before long if they
were ordered to overrun the intrenchments to their front. Formidable
[204] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
as these works had seemed at sundown, they were downright awesome
this morning after an unmolested night of labor by the troops who
manned them. Studded with guns at critical points throughout its
convex three-mile length, Lee's Spotsylvania line was constructed,
Meade's chief of staff declared, "in a manner unknown to European war-
fare, and, indeed, in a manner new to warfare in this country." Actually,
it was not so much the novelty of the individual engineering techniques
that made this log-and-dirt barrier so forbidding; it was the combina-
tion of them into a single construction of interlocking parts, the canny
use of natural features of the terrain, and the speed with which the
butternut veterans, familiar by now with the fury of Grant's assaults,
had accomplished their intricate task. Traverses zigzagged to provide
cover against enfilade fire from artillery, and head logs, chocked a few
inches above the hard-packed spoil on the enemy side of the trench,
afforded riflemen a protected slit through which they could take un-
ruffled aim at whatever came their way. Where there were woods in
front of the line, the trees were slashed to deny concealment for two
hundred yards or more, and wherever the ground was open or in-
sufficiently obstructed, timber barricades called abatis were installed
within easy rifle range, bristling with sharpened sticks to entangle
or slow the attackers while the defenders, more or less at their leisure,
picked them off. For Grant, the prospect was altogether grim. To as-
sault seemed suicidal, and yet to do nothing was militarily unsound,
since a stalemate under such circumstances might well allow Lee to
detach troops for operations against Butler or Sigel, back near Richmond
or out in the Shenandoah Valley. On the other hand, to maneuver him
out of position again by swinging wide around one of his flanks would
amount to nothing more than a postponement of the inevitable show-
down, which in that case would occur in closer proximity to his capital
and would probably result in his being reinforced by units from the
garrison charged with its ultimate defense. Grant pondered these three
alternatives, unwelcome as they were, until about midday, when Burn-
side, coming up on the left, provided information which suggested a
fourth alternative, more acceptable than the others. While making his
far-out eastern swing across Ni River, the ruff-whiskered general re-
ported, he had encountered Confederate infantry, and though he had
not had much trouble driving them off, it seemed to him that they
might be the leading element of a detached force of considerable
strength, engaged in a deep penetration of the Federal left rear for a
strike at the army's Fredericksburg supply base.
Burnside could scarcely be classed as a skilled assessor of enemy
intentions, but in the absence of Sheridan's cavalry, which might other-
wise have been sent out to confirm or refute the validity of the report,
Grant accepted the information at face value, partly on grounds that
such a move would be altogether in character for Lee. By now, after
The Forty Days [ 205 ]
the buffeting he had taken in the course of the past five days, the old
fox must be groping rather desperately in his bag of tricks for some
such table-turning maneuver as the one he had devised, under similar
circumstances, when he sent Jackson wide around Pope's flank for a
strike at the supply base in his rear, compelling that hapless commander
to abandon his position in short order. Grant's reaction was equally
characteristic, and quite different. Instead of allowing concern for his
base to deflect him from his purpose, he saw in this supposed develop-
ment a chance to strike from an unexpected direction while his oppo-
nent's attention was distracted and his army was divided. Hancock, who
had come up on the right, was instructed to detach one division, as a
possible reinforcement for Burnside, and proceed westward with the
other three for an upstream crossing of the Po. A fast march down the
opposite bank — first south, to reach the road from Shady Grove,
then eastward along it to the bridge one mile west of the Block House —
would put him in position for a second crossing, well below the point
where the rebel flank was anchored, and a sudden descent on Lee's left
rear. At worst, this should bring the Confederates out of their intrench-
ments by obliging them to turn and meet the unexpected threat; while
at best, assailed as they would be from two directions, north and south,
it would result in their destruction. In any case that was the plan,
devised in reaction to Burnside's report, and Grant considered it well
worth a try, especially since the ablest of his surviving corps commanders
was charged with its execution.
Hancock crossed upstream that afternoon, putting in three pon-
toon bridges, and encountered only sporadic opposition from butter-
nut horsemen on the prowl. Even so, he had not reached the Shady
Grove Road, leading eastward to the downstream point where he was
to make the crossing that would land him in Lee's rear, before darkness
obliged all three divisions to call a halt in the woods on the south bank.
An early start next morning — Tuesday, May 10 — brought the head
of the column within easy reach of Blockhouse Bridge by sunup. To
Hancock's surprise, there on the opposite bank, fortifications had been
thrown up overnight and were occupied in considerable strength,
bristling with guns trained expectantly on the bridge and its approaches.
Once more, with the help of his hard-working cavalry, Lee had fore-
stalled a maneuver designed to discomfit or destroy him; Hancock
could only regret that he had not waited until this morning to make
his upstream crossing, in which case he would not have afforded the
rebels a full night to work on their plans for his reception. Not much
given to spilt-milk thinking, he devised an alternate crossing, half a mile
downriver, and got one division in motion at once, intending to follow
with the other two, when a courier arrived from Meade with instruc-
tions for a quick return by two of his divisions to their former position
in line on the right of Warren. He himself was to come back with
[ 206 ] THE CIVIL WAR»"1864
them, the message directed, to take charge of his and Warren's corps
for an all-out frontal attack on the Confederate intrenchments at 5
o'clock that afternoon. . . . Hancock scarcely knew what to make of
this sudden change of plans. By now, one brigade of the advance
division was across the river; he had only to follow with the other
two divisions and Lee's flank would be turned; instead of which,
apparently, Meade intended to revert to a direct assault, Fredericks-
burg style, on fortifications that were admittedly the most formidable
ever constructed by an army in the field. Still, orders were orders, com-
prehensible or not. Recalling the crossed brigade, lest it be gobbled
up in the bridgehead it was holding, he left his lead division behind,
with instructions to continue what had now become no more than a
demonstration, and set out at once with the other two to recross the
Po by the three bridges they had installed with such high hopes the
day before.
Back on the main front, to which Hancock was returning, Grant
had ordered the change in plans as a result of Lee's failure to sustain
Burnside's assessment that he had detached a major portion of his army
for a strike at the Union supply base. In point of fact, what the IX
Corps had encountered on its approach march, down across the Ni the
day before, had not been infantry at all, but more of Stuart's
ubiquitous cavalry, dismounted as skirmishers to delay the Federal
concentration; Burnside had simply been mistaken, here as elsewhere
in his career, and Grant decided that if Lee had not divided his army,
it would be unwise for him to divide his own, particularly if this
involved detaching Hancock, his most dependable lieutenant, who
would be needed to help meet whatever crisis Lee had it in mind to
precipitate, not in theory but in fact. Accordingly, he had had Meade
summon Hancock back to his former position alongside Warren, who
had also contributed to the decision by informing his superiors that,
despite his failure yesterday, he believed he could score a breakthrough
today if he was properly supported. It was true, the attack would be
made against what seemed to be the most impregnable part of the rebel
line, but when Warren declared that he had examined it carefully and
believed it could be broken, Grant was altogether willing to give him
the chance to prove his claim. Hancock would come up on his right,
and Sedgwick's corps was already posted on his left; at 5 o'clock they
would all go forward together, and if Warren's judgment proved
sound, Lee's defenses would be pierced, his position overrun, and his
army shattered. Richmond then would be Grant's for the taking,
which in turn would mean that the war was approximately over, all
but the incidental task of picking up the pieces.
It did not work out that way for a variety of reasons. Like
Sheridan two days ago, Warren was anxious to accomplish something
solid that would cancel his poor showing up to now, and this apparently
The Forty Days [ 207 ]
made him oversanguine in his assessment of the chances for a break-
through, as well as overeager to get started. Faulty judgment thus laid
the groundwork for a failure which impatience served to enlarge.
Around 3.30, with Sedgwick's corps alerted on his left and one of
Hancock's divisions back in position on his right, he decided that to
wait another hour and a half for jump-off time, as scheduled, would be
to risk losing the opportunity he believed he saw. Or perhaps he acted
out of knowledge that Hancock, when he came up on the right,
would take command by virtue of his rank. In any case he appealed
to Grant, through Adeade, for permission to attack at once. Always
ready to encourage aggressiveness, Grant was willing, and Warren —
who had put on his dress uniform that morning, evidently for the pur-
pose of making a good appearance on what he hoped would be his
finest day since Gettysburg — went forward, around 4 o'clock; into
chaos. Exposed in the slashings and snagged by the abatis, his troops
were badly cut up, their ranks thrown into disorder by artillery and rifle
fire from the flanks and dead ahead. Some among the bravest pressed on
to within point-blank range of the rebel works, and a few even made
it to the crest of the parapet. But that was all; there was no penetra-
tion anywhere along the line. Warren kept trying, only to have the
process repeated. He was deeply discouraged at seeing his hopes break
in blood on the rim of the intrenchments, even though Grant and
Meade were not: not so deeply, at any rate, that it caused them to dis-
continue the effort to score a breakthrough here today. When Hancock
arrived soon after 5 o'clock with his other division, back at last from
his overnight excursion on the far side of the Po, he was ordered to
resume the attack at 6.30, taking charge of all the troops on the right,
his own and Warren's.
Elsewhere along the concave Union line, north and northwest of
Spotsylvania, results had been no better up to now. Posted astride the
Fredericksburg Road to block the movement Lee failed to make, Burn-
side had scarcely been engaged; his only consequential loss today was
the commander of his lead division, Brigadier General T. G. Stevenson,
a young Bostonian of high promise, who was killed instantly, much
as Sedgwick had been the day before, by a long-range sniper. Sedg-
wick's corps, headed now by Horatio Wright, who was also a Connecti-
cut-born professional, had made no more of a dent in the enemy de-
fenses than Warren's corps had done, but a close-up look at the rebel
works had given one brigade commander a notion of how to go about
making a good deal more than a dent.
This was Colonel Emory Upton, a twenty-four-year-old New
Yorker who had graduated from West Point less than a month after
Sumter and since then, aside from a brief, unhappy period as a drill
instructor of volunteers, had served with distinction in all the army's
battles, winning five promotions along the way. Strong on theory, as
[ 208 ] THECIVIL WAR^1864
well as action, Upton returned from a personal examination of the
Confederate fortifications to report to his division chief, Wright's
successor Brigadier General David Russell, that he believed he knew a
way to score a breakthrough in short order. His notion was that the
troops should attack on a narrow front, four lines deep, without pausing
to fire until a limited penetration had been achieved; whereupon the
first line would fan out left and right to widen the breach and the
second would plunge straight ahead to deepen it, supported by the
third and fourth, which would form the reserve and be called upon,
as needed, in any or all of the three directions. Russell liked the plan
and took Upton to see the corps commander, who liked it too. In
fact, Wright liked it so well that he not only gave the young colonel
twelve regiments to use in the attack, but also arranged to have a full
division standing by to exploit whatever success was gained. Speed and
precision being the main elements, together with a clear distribution of
duties, Upton took the dozen unit commanders forward to the line of
departure, along the edge of a dense belt of pines 200 yards from the
rebel works, and indicated to each of them just what was expected of
him. The point selected for assault was about midway down the
western face of a salient which Ewell's corps had occupied to deny the
Federals possession of some high ground where they might otherwise
have posted batteries to enfilade this central portion of Lee's line, the
two wings of which slanted sharply back from the salient or "angle,"
as it was called. Rebel guns were thick in there, thicker than anywhere
else along the line, but it was Upton's plan to get among them fast and
overwhelm the crews before they had much chance to use them. Having
explained all this to the individual leaders, and shown them their
objectives on the map and on the ground, he told them to bring their
regiments forward, one at a time to avoid attracting attention to the
buildup, and post them under cover for the assault, which was set for
6 o'clock, one hour before sunset and two before dark.
At ten minutes past the appointed time, having waited for the pre-
arranged bombardment to die down, Upton gave the signal and the
column started forward with a cheer, three regiments in each of its
four lines. Almost at once the rebel guns took up the challenge, blasting
away at the mass of bluecoats running toward them across the field, but
despite the delay involved in breaking through the tangled abatis, set
up about midway between the woods and the intrenchments, men of
all three leading regiments were mounting the parapet within five
minutes of the jump-off. These first arrivers were shot or bayonetted or
clubbed back — Upton later reported that at this stage the defenders
"absolutely refused to yield the ground" — but as others came up, the
weight of numbers began to tell. Presently there was hand-to-hand
fighting in the trenches, which broke off when the second wave of
attackers arrived and the badly outweighed Confederates turned and
The Forty Days [ 209 ]
ran for their secondary defenses, just under 200 yards in their rear.
Many did not make it, being captured or shot down. Meantime the first
Federal line had fanned out left and right, widening the gap, and the
reserves were surging forward to support the second in its continued
penetration. So far, everything had worked precisely as Upton had
planned; the rebel line was broken. Whether the break would be ex-
tended, or even remain — Confederate reinforcements were coming in
fast by then from other parts of the salient — depended now on the
division Wright had given the assignment of exploiting just such a
success as had been gained.
This was not one of his own divisions, but the one that had been
detached from Hancock when he crossed the Po the day before.
Originally intended for support of the IX Corps, it had been attached
to Wright when the threat to Burnside turned out to be nonexistent,
and Wright had given its commander, Gershom Mott, instructions to
support Upton by advancing simultaneously on the apex of the "angle,"
thus to divert the attention of the defenders away from the main effort,
midway down the western face of the salient; after which he was to
move fast to consolidate, and if possible enlarge, whatever gains had
been scored in that direction. As it turned out, he was only too success-
ful, both for his own sake and for Upton's, in carrying out the first
half of this assignment. Forming his two brigades in full view of the
objective, half a mile away, Mott did such a thorough job of attracting
the attention of the rebels (particularly the gunners, who had crowded
into that narrow space no fewer than 22 pieces of artillery with which
to take him under fire across half a mile of open ground) that his divi-
sion was knocked to pieces within minutes. Already badly shaken by
their Wilderness experience, the troops milled about briefly under
this pounding, some of them attempting ineffectively to return the
fire with their outranged rifles, then scuttled backward in confusion,
seeking cover and concealment. Staff officers, sent out to search for
them that evening, found them deep in the rearward woods, huddled in
groups about their regimental flags and boiling coffee to help them re-
cover from the shock. Like Robinson's division, which had gone out
of existence as a result of its misadventure two days ago, Mott's too
would presently be abolished, the remnant of its two brigades being
assigned three days afterward to another division in Hancock's corps.
But that was later. A more immediate consequence of the rout
was that Upton's breakthrough went for nothing, not only because
he was left without support, but also because the defenders now were
free to concentrate all their attention and strength on healing the
breach. This they were quick to do, obliging Upton to fight his way
out of the rebel lines with much of the fervor and urgency he had dis-
played while fighting his way in. Darkness, gathering fast after sun-
down, was a help in the disengagement; all twelve regiments made it
[2io] THE CIVIL WAR»"1864
back to their own lines, having suffered about one thousand casualties.
That was also about the number they inflicted, mostly in the form of
prisoners taken in the initial rush and escorted into the Federal lines
before the counterattack obliged their captors to follow in their wake.
Far on the right, Hancock's attack, deferred till sunset, was repulsed at
about the same time, as decisively as Warren's had been earlier, and
Burnside continued his pointless vigil on the left. Night came down as
the fighting ended. Men sat around campfires and discussed the events
of the day, which provoked much blame of Mott and praise for Upton.
Across the way, notes faint in the distance and filtered through the
trees, a Confederate band lent an eerie touch to the scene by playing
"Nearer, My God, to Thee," but this was offset to some extent, or
anyhow balanced, when a Union band responded with the "Dead
March" from Saul.
One of Upton's warmest admirers was the general-in-chief, who
rewarded him with a battlefield promotion — subject, of course, to
Washington approval — "for gallant and meritorious services." Much
encouraged by the young colonel's tactical contribution, which he saw
as the key to Lee's undoing if the maneuver could be repeated on a
larger scale and properly supported, Grant was in high spirits. A head-
quarters orderly saw him talking to Meade about the prospect that
night with unaccustomed animation, puffing rapidly on a cigar. "A
brigade today," he was saying; "we'll try a corps tomorrow."
Thinking it over he realized however that tomorrow would be
too soon. One trouble with today's attack was that it had been launched
with not enough daylight left for its full exploitation; dawn would be
a much better time in that regard, and the preceding darkness would
help to conceal the massing of large bodies of troops within charging
distance of the rebel works. So Grant, having ruled out tomorrow, de-
cided that the assault would be delivered at first light on the following
day, May 1 2 — which would also give him plenty of time for briefing
all commanders, high and low, and an unhurried movement of units,
large and small, into their designated jump-off areas. Given the method,
the tactical execution was fairly obvious. Hancock would be shifted
from the far right to the center, where he would be in charge of the
main effort, and he would make it with his whole corps, against the
very point that Mott had failed to hit today, the apex of the "angle,"
the military theory being that the tip of a salient was hard to defend
because fire from the lines slanting back from that forward point
could not converge on a force advancing from dead ahead. It was true,
this theory had not applied too well on that same ground today; Mott
had been wrecked before he got within reach of the objective. But
Hancock's assault would be delivered Upton-style, without pauses for
alignment or for firing, and if it worked as well for him as it had
worked for Upton, his men would be up to the enemy works, and
The Forty Days [211]
maybe over them, before the defenders had time to offer much resist-
ance. Moreover this attack, unlike the one today, would be heavily
supported. Burnside, off on the left, would move up close tomorrow
night and launch a simultaneous assault next morning against the
salient's eastern face, while Wright and Warren kept up the pressure
on the right and the far right. Further details could be worked out next
day, when the formal order was drawn up. In any case, after Upton's
demonstration late today, a Tuesday, Grant had little doubt that Lee's
defenses would be breached on Thursday and that careful planning
would see to it that the breach was enlarged to victory proportions. He
went to bed in a better frame of mind than he had done on any of the
other five nights since May 4, when his army completed its crossing of
the Rapidan unopposed.
That his mood was still the same on Wednesday, hopeful and de-
termined, was demonstrated shortly after breakfast by his response to a
request from a distinguished visitor, U. S. Representative Elihu B.
Washburne of Illinois, that he give him some word of encouragement to
take back to Washington with him. Grant's congressional guardian angel
from the outset of the war, Washburne had spent the past week at
headquarters, where, incongruous in somber civilian broadcloth amid
the panoply of the staff, he had been something of a puzzle to the
troops; they could not figure who or what he was, until a wit ex-
plained that the general, with his usual concern for the eventualities,
had brought his private undertaker along on the campaign. Now that
he was returning to his duties at the capital, the congressman told Grant
as they stood outside the latter's tent to say goodbye, it might be a
good idea to relieve the anxiety of the President and the Secretary of
War by sending them some word on the progress of the fighting here
in Virginia. "I know they would be greatly gratified," Washburne
said, "if I could carry a message from you giving what encouragement
you can as to the situation." Grant looked doubtful. He was aware that
anything of the kind would be released to the public, and he did not
want to be hurt, as others before him had been hurt, by the boomerang
effect of overoptimistic statements. Pleased though he was with his
progress so far, he replied, he knew that the road ahead was a long one
and he was therefore "anxious not to say anything just now that might
hold out false hopes to the people." He hesitated, then added: "However,
I will write a letter to Halleck, as I generally communicate through him,
giving the general situation, and you can take it with you." He stepped
inside the tent, sat down at his field desk, and after heading a sheet of
paper, "Near Spottsylvania C. H., May 1 1, 1864 — 8.30 a.m.," scribbled
a couple of hundred words, puffing away at his cigar as he wrote. "We
have now ended our sixth day of very hard fighting," he informed
Halleck. "The result up to this time is much in our favor. But our
losses have been heavy, as well as those of the enemy. ... I am now
[2i2] THE CIVIL WAR3P-1864
sending back to Belle Plain all my wagons for a fresh supply of provi-
sions and ammunition, and purpose to fight it out on this line if it
takes all summer. ... I am satisfied the enemy are very shaky, and are
only kept up to the mark by the greatest exertions on the part of their
officers and by keeping them intrenched in every position they take."
When he finished he had a clerk make a fair copy, which he then
signed and folded and gave to Washburne, along with a farewell
handshake, before returning to work on his plans for tomorrow's dawn
assault. Staff officers read the retained draft of the letter, one afterwards
recalled, without finding in it anything unusual or "epigrammatic" until
a few days later, when the New York papers reached camp with excerpts
from it splashed across their front pages in large headlines — particularly
a phrase or sentence which someone, either the copyist here or another
at the far end, polished up a bit: "I propose to fight it out on this line
if it takes all summer." That caught the attention of the editors, and
through them the public, with a force unequaled by anything Grant
had said or written since the Unconditional Surrender note at Donelson,
more than two years ago. "I propose to move immediately upon your
works" had passed into history as a watchword signifying Federal
determination to press for total victory over the forces in rebellion, and
so too, now, did "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all
summer."
Grant's assessment of the Confederates as "very shaky" indicated
that he had not really believed it would take "all summer" to settle the
issue at hand that Wednesday morning, north of Spotsylvania. By mid-
afternoon — coincident with a sudden change in the weather, brought
on by a light drizzle of rain that dropped the temperature from the
unseasonable high it had been holding for the past few days — the field
order for tomorrow's attack was being distributed to the commanders
of all four corps. Already in close proximity to the enemy along their
respective portions of the line, Warren and Wright would remain
more or less where they were, and Burnside had only a limited adjust-
ment to make. It was otherwise with Hancock, who had to shift three
of his divisions into position with the fourth, Mott's, which by now,
although considerably diminished and dejected, had been reassembled
just in rear of the area where it had begun its ill-fated advance the day
before. The division he had left beyond the Po when he returned with
the other two, in accordance with orders from Meade, had also recrossed
the river after a clash with a rebel force Lee sent over from his right,
and in this rear-guard action the division had had to leave behind a gun
that, in the haste of the withdrawal, got wedged so tightly between two
trees that it could not be freed. Hancock took this hard, the more so
because it was the only piece of artillery the II Corps had ever lost in
battle, and he was determined to get full revenge tomorrow.
Just now, though, he had his hands full getting his troops into
The Forty Days [ 213 ]
position for the attack at first light, which the almanac said would
come at 4 a.m. The march began at dusk, along a narrow road soon
churned to mud by a pelting rain that seemed to be getting harder by
the hour. It was midnight before the head of the column reached the
jump-off area and the four divisions, three of them wet and cold from
their rainy march, started forming in the dripping woods. This too was
a difficult business, for more reasons than the unpleasantness of the
weather or the loss of sleep and lack of food. Here on reconnaissance
earlier that day, unable to see far or clearly through the steely curtain
of rain, Hancock had tried to get Mott's disheartened men to drive the
enemy pickets back so he could get a look at the objective; but little
or nothing came of the attempt — they had too vivid a memory of what
those 22 guns up there had done to them the day before — with the re-
sult that his examination of the apex of the "angle," along with most
of the intervening ground across which he would charge, had practically
been limited to what he could learn from the map. And so it was to-
night, in the rain and darkness. The best Hancock could do was give his
division commanders a compass bearing, derived from the map by draw-
ing a line connecting a house in their rear with a house in the approxi-
mate center of the rebel salient, and tell them to move in that direction
when they received his order to advance.
Four o'clock came, but not daylight; the almanac had not taken the
rain or fog into account. Finally at 4.30, though there still was scarcely
a glimmer of light from what the compass showed to be the east, word
came for the lead division to go forward, followed closely by the other
three.
Fearing the worst as they stumbled forward through fog so
dense that it held back the dawn, Hancock and his soldiers were in better
luck than they had any way of knowing. For one thing, those 22 guns
assigned to defend the apex of the salient up ahead, which they ex-
pected to start roaring at any moment, tearing their close-packed ranks
with shot and shell within seconds of hearing a picket give the alarm,
were by no means the threat they had been two days ago, when they
all but demolished one of these four divisions attempting this same
thing on this same ground. They were in fact no threat at all. They
were not there. They had been withdrawn the night before, as the result
of an overdue error by Lee, whose intelligence machinery, after a week
of smooth if not uncanny functioning, had finally slipped a cog.
Reports of activity beyond the Union lines had been coming in
from various sources all the previous afternoon. A lookout perched in
the belfry of a Spotsylvania church, which commanded a view of the
roads in rear of the enemy left, informed headquarters of what seemed
to be a large-scale withdrawal in that direction, and this was confirmed
between 4 and 5 o'clock by two messages from Lee's cavalryman son,
[214] THE CIVIL WAR35T 1864
whose division — left behind by Stuart when he took out after Sheridan,
two days ago, with three of his six brigades — was probing for informa-
tion in that direction. Heavy trains were in motion for Fredericksburg,
young Lee declared, and Federal wounded were being taken across the
Rappahannock in large numbers to Belle Plain, eight miles beyond on
the Potomac. "There is evidently a general move going on," he notified
his father. Here as in the Wilderness, the southern commander was
alert to the danger of having his opponent steal a march on him, and
here as there he was prepared to react on the basis of information less
than conclusive or even substantial. Such activity in Grant's left rear
could mean that, having found the Spotsylvania confrontation un-
profitable and restrictive, he had one of two strategic shifts in mind: i )
a limited retreat to Fredericksburg, where he would consolidate his
forces and better cover his supply line for a subsequent advance by land
or water, or 2) another swing around the Confederate right, to inter-
pose his army between Lee and Richmond. From Lee's point of view,
though a similar endeavor had failed four days ago, the latter was the
more dangerous maneuver, one that he simply could not afford to have
succeed. In this case, however, he believed from the evidence that what
Grant was about to attempt was a withdrawal to the Rappahannock line,
and he wanted to prevent this — or, more strictly speaking, take ad-
vantage of it — almost as much as he did the other. In conversation
with two of his generals about an hour before sundown he told why.
It began as a discussion of Grant's worth as a tactician. Lee was
visiting Harry Heth's headquarters, on the far right near the court-
house, as was A. P. Hill, up and about but still not well enough to re-
turn to duty, when a staff officer happened to remark that, in slaughter-
ing his troops by assaulting earthworks, the Union commander was
little better than a butcher. Lee did not agree. "I think General Grant
has managed his affairs remarkably well up to the present time," he said
quietly. Then he turned to Heth and told him what he had come for.
"My opinion is the enemy are preparing to retreat tonight to Fredericks-
burg. I wish you to have everything in readiness to pull out at a
moment's notice, but do not disturb your artillery till you commence
moving. We must attack those people if they retreat."
Hill spoke up, pale but impetuous as always. "General Lee, let
them continue to attack our breastworks. We can stand that very well."
The talk was then of casualties, and though no one knew the
actual number of the fallen on either side (Grant in fact had lost about
7000 men by now in front of Spotsylvania, while Lee was losing
barely one third that many) all expressed their satisfaction with the
present position, which they were convinced they could maintain
longer than the Federals could afford to keep assaulting it. Lee rose to
go; "We must attack those people if they retreat," he had declared, and
in parting he explained what he meant by that. "This army cannot
The Forty Days [215]
stand a siege," he said. "We must end this business on the battlefield, not
in a fortified place."
From there he rode in the rain to the center, where Ewell had
disposed his three divisions to defend the salient, one along its eastern
face and the apex, another along its western face, where Upton had
scored an abortive breakthrough yesterday, and the third in reserve,
posted rearward under instructions to move quickly in support of any
stricken point along the inverted U of the intrenched perimeter. Dubbed
the "Mule Shoe" by its defenders in description of its shape, the posi-
tion was a little under a mile in depth and about two thirds as wide,
heavily wooded for the most part and crisscrossed by a few narrow,
winding roads. Because of this last, which would make removal of the
guns a difficult business in the dark and the deepening mud, Lee told
Ewell to get the batteries that were posted in the forward portion of
the salient withdrawn before nightfall, in order to avoid delaying
pursuit of the Federals when word arrived that their retreat was under
way. It was close to sunset now, and while Ewell got to work on this
Lee rode to First Corps headquarters on the left. After giving Ander-
son the instructions he had earlier given Heth — to be ready to pull
out at a moment's notice, but to leave his artillery in position until then
— the gray commander returned to his tent to get what sleep he could
between then and 3.30, his usual rising time at this critical stage of the
campaign.
Within the salient, as night wore on and the rain came down
harder, a feeling of uneasiness, which began with the departure of the
guns, pervaded the bivouacs and trenches. At first it was vague — "a
nameless something in the air," one soldier was to call it, looking back
— but after midnight it grew less so, particularly for the men who held
the "toe" of the shoe-shaped line and were closest to the enemy posi-
tion. A sort of rumble, slow but steady, came from the saturated dark-
ness out in front; some likened it to the muffled thunder of a waterfall,
others to the grinding of a powerful machine. Veterans who heard it,
over and under the pelting of the rain, identified it as the sound of troops
in motion by the thousands. Either a retreat was under way, as Lee had
said, or else a heavy attack was in the making. If it was the latter, there
was difficulty in telling whether the enemy was moving to the left or
right, for a strike at Anderson or Early, or massing for another assault
on the Mule Shoe. One of Edward Johnson's brigade commanders,
Brigadier General George H. Steuart, a Maryland-born West Pointer,
went out to his picket line for a closer investigation. He had not listened
long before he decided that the Federals not only were preparing an
attack, but were aiming it at him. His next thought was of the gun
pits standing empty along his portion of the works, and he went at once
to Johnson to urge the prompt return of his artillery, parked since sun-
down back near Spotsylvania. Old Allegheny passed the request to
[2i6] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
Ewell, who approved it. All 22 of the withdrawn guns would be back
in position by 2 o'clock, he said.
When the appointed time had come, but not the guns, Steuart's
anxiety mounted. After waiting another hour he went again to John-
son, who had a staff officer make the round of the brigades with orders
for the troops to turn out and check the condition of their rifles, while
another rode back to inform Ewell that the artillery had not arrived as
promised. All this time, that muffled grinding sound continued in the
outer darkness. Shortly before 4.30, just as the fog began to lift a bit,
Johnson was relieved to learn that the missing guns were returning up
the road from the base of the salient. Before they came in sight, how-
ever, the sound out front in the paling darkness rose in volume and
intensity, drawing nearer, until it became the unmistakable tramp of a
marching host. From a distance of about 300 yards a mighty cheer went
up — the deep-chested roar of charging Federals, as distinguished from
the high-throated scream that was known as the rebel yell — and heavy
masses of blue infantry, close-packed and a-bristle with bayonets glint-
ing steely in the dawn, broke through the fog directly in front of the
apex of the salient. Alerted, the Confederates rose and gave the attackers
point-blank volleys. In some cases the fire was effective, while in others
it was not, depending on whether unit commanders had acted on the
warning to have their men draw the dampened charges from their
rifles and reload. Not that it mattered tactically; for whether their losses
were high or low, the various elements of the dense blue mass surged
up and over the parapet, into the trenches. Johnson, who was sometimes
called "Old Clubby" because of the stout hickory stick he used as a
cane to favor the leg he had been shot in, two years back, limped about
amid the confusion and implored his troops to keep fighting, despite
the odds; the guns would soon be up to settle the issue, he told them,
and for a moment it seemed to be true. The lead battery unlimbered,
there in the toe of the Mule Shoe, and managed to get off one round
each from two of the pieces. But that was all. "Stop firing that gun!" the
cannoneers heard someone shout as they prepared to reload, and looked
around to find scores of rifles leveled at them by hard-eyed Federals
who had broken the gray line. They raised their hands. Others were
less fortunate,, taking fire from all directions before they knew the place
had been overrun. "Where shall I point the gun?" a rattled corporal
asked a badly wounded lieutenant. "At the Yankees," he replied with his
last breath. But the two rounds already gotten off were all that were
fired before all but two of the 22 guns were surrendered, most of them
still in limber on the road.
Lee was breakfasting by lantern light when the rapid-fire clatter
erupted in the Mule Shoe to inform him that the enemy, far from re-
treating, was launching an assault upon his center, which he had stripped
The Forty Days
[217]
to
Fredericksburg
of guns the night before. From
the volume of sound he knew
the attack was a heavy one, and
presently, when he mounted
Traveller to ride in that direc-
tion, he saw at first hand that,
so far at least, it had also been
successful. Fugitives fled past
him, streaming rearward, with
and without their weapons.
"Hold on!" he cried, removing
his hat so they would know
him. "Your comrades need your
services. Stop, men!" Some
stopped and some kept running
past him with a wild look in their eyes. "Shame on you men; shame on
you!" he called after them in his deep voice. "Go back to your regi-
ments." As he drew near the base of the salient he met an officer from
Edward Johnson's staff riding to bring him word of what had happened
up ahead. Pouring in through a quick break just east of the apex, which
was held by Stonewall Jackson's old Manassas brigade, the Federals had
fanned out rapidly, left and right, to come upon the adjoining brigades
from the flank and rear. Johnson himself had been taken, after being sur-
rounded and very nearly shot because he would not stop hobbling about,
brandishing his hickory club and calling for his troops to rally, even
though a whole company of bluecoats had their rifles trained on him.
Steuart too was a prisoner, along with a number of his soldiers, and the
Stonewall Brigade had surrendered practically en masse when the enemy
came up in its rear and blocked the possibility of escape. In all, no less than
half of Johnson's 5000-man division had been shot or captured in the first
half hour of fighting, along with twenty guns and well over half of the
regimental flags.
That was the worst of it. On the credit side, Lee was presently
to learn, Rodes's division, by "refusing" its flank adjoining the break
at the apex, was holding fast to the western face of the salient, and
Wilcox had managed to do the same on the right, where Early's line
joined Ewell's, even though an attack of nearly equal strength had been
made against that point by Burnside at about the same time Hancock
struck. This meant that, up to now at any rate, the breakthrough was
laterally contained. Whether it could also be contained in depth was
another matter, and it was to this that Lee gave his immediate attention.
"Ride with me to General Gordon," he told the orphaned staff man,
and continued to spur Traveller toward the open end of the Mule
Shoe, where Gordon's division had been posted with instructions to
support Rodes or Johnson in such a crisis as the one at hand.
[2i8] THE CIVIL WAR3T 1864
Gordon had already begun to meet the situation by sending one
of his three brigades forward on a wide front, the men deployed as
skirmishers to blunt the Federal penetration, and was preparing to
counterattack with the other two, his own Georgians and Pegram's
Virginians, when Lee rode up. "What do you want me to do, General?"
Gordon asked. Lee wanted him to do just what he was doing, and said
so, knowing only too well that unless the Union drive was stopped
his army would be cut in half. Gordon saluted and returned to the
work at hand. However, as he was about to give the signal to go for-
ward he looked back and saw that Lee, faced with a crisis as grave
as the one six days ago in the Wilderness, was responding in the same
fashion here at Spotsylvania. Still with his hat off, he had ridden to a
position near the center of the line, between the two brigades, with the
obvious intention of taking part in the charge. Horrified — for he knew
how great the danger was, even here near the base of the salient, having
just had his coat twitched by a stray bullet out of the woods he was
about to enter — the young brigadier wheeled his horse and rode back
to confront his gray-haired chief. "General Lee, this is no place for
you," he told him. "Go back, General; we will drive them back."
Soldiers from both brigades began to gather about the two horsemen
for a better view, and Gordon spoke louder, wanting them to reinforce
his plea. "These men are Virginians and Georgians. They have never
failed you. They never will. Will you, boys?" The answer was prompt
and vociferous. "No! No!" "General Lee to the rear; Lee to the rear!"
"We'll drive them back for you, General!" Lee kept looking straight
ahead, apparently determined not to be put off, until a tall Virginia
sergeant took the matter into his own hands by grabbing Traveller's
rein, jerking his head around, and leading him rearward through the
cheering ranks.
Behind him Lee heard Gordon's voice ring out above the roar of
battle, which grew louder as the breakthrough deepened: "Forward!
Guide right!" And while the Virginians and Georgians crashed into
the woods to come to grips with the attackers, as they had promised
they would do, the southern commander resumed his higher duties. Of
these, the most immediate was to find some means of strengthening
the counterattack now being launched, and in this connection his
first thought was of the fugitives, the troops blown loose from their
units when the forward part of the salient went. "Collect together the
men of Johnson's division and report to General Gordon," he told
the orphaned staffer. That would help, though probably not enough.
He thought then of Mahone's division, detached from Early two days
ago to meet the threat from across the Po at Blockhouse Bridge, and sent
word for Mahone to leave one brigade in the newly dug intrenchments
there, protecting his flank, and move at once with the other three to
reinforce Gordon's effort to restore the integrity of his broken center.
The Forty Days [ 219 ]
In point of fact Gordon was already doing remarkably well on
his own, first by stemming, then by reversing the flow of the blue flood
down the salient. His success in this unequal contest — in effect, a match-
ing of three brigades against four divisions — was due in part to the
fury of his assault, inspired by Lee, and in part to the assistance given
by the hard-core remnant of Johnson's division, as well as by the troops
from the adjoining divisions of Rodes and Wilcox, whose interior
flanks hooked onto the wings of his line as he advanced. All this helped;
but perhaps the greatest help came from the Federals themselves, who
by then were in no condition, tactically or otherwise, to offer sustained
resistance to what Gordon threw at them. Boiling over the works and
onto unfamiliar ground, a maze of trenches and traverses, thickly
wooded in spots and cluttered with prisoners and debris, they scarcely
knew which way to turn in order to make the most of the break-
through they had scored with such comparative ease and speed. The im-
petus at this point came mainly from the rear, as more and more of
Hancock's men continued to pour into the salient; eventually there were
close to 20,000 of them in an area less than half a mile square, with such
resultant jumbling of their ranks that what had been meant to be a
smoothly functioning military formation quickly degenerated into a
close-packed mob, some of whose members were so tightly wedged
against their fellows that, like muscle-bound athletes, they could not
lift their arms to use their weapons. It was at this discordant stage that
Gordon struck, and the effect of his fire on the men in that hampered
mass of blue was appalling. A bullet could scarcely miss its mark, or if
it did it struck another quite as vital. Turning to breast the pressure
from the rear, where there was little knowledge of what was going on
up front, they broke as best they could, a stumbling herd, and fled
back up the salient to gain the protection of the intrenchments they
had crossed on their way in. Gordon's troops came after them, screaming
and firing as they ran.
Down the eastern face of the salient, the critical point being near
its base, where Ewell's line joined Early's, Burnside had attacked at
about the same time Hancock did; but there was less confusion here,
on both sides, for the simple reason that there had been no penetration.
Recoiling, the three blue divisions — made up of greener, less de-
termined men than the veterans under Meade — found what cover they
could, within range of the rebel works, and contented themselves with
firing at whatever showed above the parapet. This gave Wilcox so
little trouble that he was free to assist in Gordon's counterattack, thus
helping to keep Hancock off his flank. Across the way, down the
western face of the salient, Rodes was able to do the same, for the even
simpler reason that he had not been hit at all; not yet. But then at 6
o'clock, with Hancock's attackers tamped firmly back into the toe of
the Mule Shoe, Wright struck. He came up hard, with everything he
[ 2zo] THE CIVIL WAR»"1864
had, against that portion of Rodes's front where Upton had scored
the original breakthrough, two days back. Rodes managed to prevent
a repetition of that archetypical success, though only by the hardest.
Much of the fighting was hand-to-hand, across the works, but Wright's
attack, like Hancock's, was muscle-bound, hampered by its bulk; he too
had close to 20,000 men and he was mindful of Grant's concern that
he bring the weight of every one of them to bear. Rodes kept his
badly outnumbered division in position, but he knew that the line
might go with a rush at any moment under all that pressure. Accord-
ingly, he sent word to Lee that if he was to prevent a second break-
through — potentially even more dangerous than the first, since it
would put the attackers in rear of practically every Confederate in the
salient — he must have reinforcements, and have them quick.
They were already on the way from Blockhouse Bridge. Sent for
earlier to strengthen Gordon's counterattack, the three brigades from
Mahone's division could be used instead to shore up Rodes; provided
of course that they came up in time. Impatient at their nonarrival, Lee
rode westward in rear of Anderson's position — which had not been
attacked, so far, but was under fire from Warren's long-range artillery
— to meet them and save time by redirecting their march to the hard-
pressed west face of the salient, where the Federals were hammering at
the works. Presently he came upon the lead brigade, Carnot Posey's
Mississippians, now under Brigadier General Nathaniel Harris, a thirty-
year-old former Vicksburg lawyer. Lee rode alongside Harris, giving
instructions, and the Union gunners, spotting the column in brisk motion
across the way, lengthened their ranges to bring it under fire. They
concentrated mainly on the horsemen at its head, with the result that
Lee had to give all his attention to Traveller, who began to rear wildly
amid a flurry of plunging shot and bursting shell. Lee kept his seat,
doing what he could to calm the animal, but Traveller kept rearing. It
was well he did; for as he went back on his hind legs, boxing the air
with his forehoofs, a solid shot, which otherwise would have killed
or maimed both horse and rider, passed directly under his belly.
Horrified, the Mississippians began to yell: "Go back, General! Go
back! For God's sake, go back!" They tried to get between him and the
exploding shells, urging him to hurry out of range, but Lee was in no
more of a mind to retire from this fourth Lee-to-the-rear tableau than
he had been to quit the other three. His blood was up, now as before;
anxiety was on him. At last he said, "If you will promise me to drive
those people from our works, I will go back." The soldiers cheered
and, while Lee watched admiringly, took up the march at a faster rate,
joining Rodes in time to prevent a breakthrough which one of his
brigadiers had just warned him was only minutes away.
Now, however, this second phase of the contest, which ended
with the approximate restoration of Lee's line, merged into the third,
The Forty Days [ 221 ]
a struggle even fiercer than the two that had gone before. Tamped
back into the toe of the Mule Shoe, Hancock's troops found cover by
recrossing the log parapet and taking shelter behind it. There they
stayed and there they fought, sometimes at arm's length, much as
Wright's men were doing on their right, down the western face of the
salient, where the region of Upton's abortive penetration acquired a
new name: The Bloody Angle. The term had been used before, in other
battles elsewhere in the war, but there was no doubt forever after, at
least on the part of those who fought there, that here was where the
appellation best applied. It soon became apparent to both sides that what
they were involved in now was not only fiercer than what had gone
before, today, but was in fact more horrendous than what had gone be-
fore, ever. This was grimmer than the Wilderness — a way of saying
that it was worse than anything at all — not so much in bloodshed,
although blood was shed in plenty, as in concentrated terror. These
were the red hours of the conflict, hours no man who survived them
would forget, even in his sleep, forever after. Fighting thus at arm's
length across that parapet, they were caught up in a waking nightmare,
although they were mercifully spared the knowledge, at the outset, that
it was to last for another sixteen unrelenting hours. "All day long it was
one continuous assault," a Pennsylvanian would recall. But in truth it
was as much a defense as it was an attack, on either side, and the two were
simultaneous. Neither victory nor defeat was any longer a factor in the
struggle. Men simply fought to keep on fighting, and not so much on
instinct as on pure adrenalin. Slaughter became an end in itself, unre-
lated to issues or objectives, as if it had nothing whatever to do with
the war. Troops were killed by thrusts and stabs through chinks in the
log barricade, while others were harpooned by bayonetted rifles flung
javelin-style across it. Sometimes in this extremity even the instinct
for self-preservation went by the board. From point to point, some
wrought-up soldier would leap up on the parapet and fire down into the
opposite mass of blue or gray, then continue this with loaded rifles
passed up by comrades until he was shot down and another wrought-up
soldier took his place. Rain fell, slacked, fell again in sheets, drenching
the fighters and turning the floor of their slaughter pen to slime. Down
in the trenches, dead and wounded men were trampled out of sight in
the blood-splotched mud by those who staggered up to take their posts
along the works, until they too were dropped or forced to retire be-
cause their weapons became so powder-fouled from rapid firing that
they could not be loaded to fire again. High though the casualties were
along this portion of the line, they would have been much higher if
there had been time or room for taking aim. As it was, the largely
unaimed fire — particularly heavy from the Federal side, where men
were stacked up twenty deep in places — passed over the heads of the
Confederates to destroy a whole grove of trees within the salient;
[222] THE CIVIL WAR»* 1864
some, including an oak nearly two feet in diameter, were actually
felled by the chipping bullets, which, to the amazement of a Vermont
brigadier, continued their work until the fallen trunks and limbs "were
cut to pieces and whipped into basket-stuff." One of Wright's officers,
fighting in the Bloody Angle, tried afterwards to sum up what he had
lived through. "I never expect to be believed when I tell of what I saw
of the horrors of Spotsylvania," he wrote, "because I should be loath
to believe it myself were the cases reversed."
Warren's infantry moved out at last, shortly after 9 o'clock, in a
full-scale assault on the Confederate left, but this was broken up so
effectively by Anderson's artillery and massed small-arms fire that not
a Federal reached the works along this portion of the line. Severely
hurt, the attackers recoiled and did not venture out again, permitting
Lee to detach a brigade from each of the two First Corps divisions as
reinforcements for Ewell in the Mule Shoe. They were sorely needed.
It was noon by then and men were falling there from nervous ex-
haustion as well as from wounds. Veterans who had survived the worst
this war afforded, up to now, went through the motions of combat after
the manner of blank-faced automatons, as if what they were involved in
had driven them beyond madness into imbecility; they fought by the
numbers, unrecognizant of comrades in the ultimate loneliness of a
horror as profoundly isolating in its effect as bone pain, nausea, or
prolonged orgasm, their vacant eyes unlighted by anger or even
dulled by fear. There were exceptions. One man, for example, stopped
fighting to plunder an abandoned knapsack, and finding clean clothes
in it, stripped off his butternut rags to exchange them for the laundered
finery, underwear and all, then returned cheerfully to the grisly work
at hand, apparently refreshed. But for the most part they had that look,
well known to experienced officers of the line, of troops whose numb-
ness under pressure might give way at any moment to utter panic, an
abrupt collapse of all resistance. Unit commanders began to send word
to superiors that the men were near their limits of endurance, but the
answer was always the same: Hold on longer, a little longer, until a new
line of intrenchments, under construction across the base of the salient
by Martin Smith's engineers, could be completed to provide shelter for
the troops when they withdrew. So they kept fighting, albeit me-
chanically, up in the blood-drenched toe of the A4ule Shoe and down its
western shank, and Hancock and Wright kept battering, although
they too had most of the same problems with regard to keeping their
larger masses of men involved in the meat-grinder action along those
two portions of the line.
Sunset, twilight, and the following darkness brought no slacken-
ing of the struggle; 9 o'clock came, then 10, and then n; "Not yet"
was still the answer to urgent requests for permission to retire to the
line being drawn across the gorge of the salient, half a mile in rear
The Forty Days [223]
of the apex which had been under bloody contention for the past
eighteen hours. Finally, at midnight, word arrived and was passed
along the zigzag curve of trenches — defined against the moonless
blackness by the wink and glare of muzzle flashes, fitful stabs of pinkish
yellow stitching their pattern back and forth across the parapet — for
a piecemeal disengagement to begin. Unit by unit, so stealthily that
they were not detected, the weary graybacks stumbled rearward
through the bullet-tattered woods to where the new line had been dug.
It was close to dawn before the last of them completed their somnambulis-
tic withdrawal and took up their position in the works near the Brock
Road. Daybreak showed the abandoned salient held only by corpses,
the sodden trenches yawning empty save for these and other shattered
remnants of the all-day battle. Still hugging the outward face of the
log barricade, the Federals did not cross it even now that the defenders
had departed, and the Confederates were glad that this was so. Ex-
hausted, out of contact at last, blue and gray alike slept on their arms
in the mud where they lay, oblivious to the pelting rain. Lee had pre-
served the integrity of his position, but at a cruel cost, having had
nearly 3000 of his hard-core veterans captured and a somewhat larger
number killed or wounded. Grant had lost as many, if not more; 6820
was the subsequent Federal count for this one day, a figure almost as
great as the total for the three preceding days, when the Confederates
lost fewer than one third as many. The gray army, fighting for the most
part behind intrenchments, had managed to maintain its one-for-two
ratio of casualties suffered and inflicted since the start of the campaign.
But that was by no means the whole story of comparable attrition,
which, as it applied to the men of highest rank on the two rosters, was
just the other way around. Eight days of combat had cost the Army
of Northern Virginia better than one third of its corps, division, and
brigade commanders — 20 out of 57, killed or captured or severely
wounded — while its adversary was losing barely half as many, 10 out
of 69. And presently word arrived that still another Confederate general
was to be added to the doleful list, one whose loss might prove the
hardest to bear of them all, since his absence in the past had left the
army and its famed commander groping blind.
Soon after the blue assault was launched, on the morning of May
12, Lee received a telegram informing him of the mishap, which had
occurred within ten miles of Richmond the afternoon before. "Gentle-
men, we have very bad news," he announced to a group around
him; "General Stuart has been mortally wounded. A most valuable and
able officer — " He paused, as if in search of further words for a formal
statement, but then gave up and merely added in a shaken voice: "He
never brought me a piece of false information." His sorrow was
commensurate with his personal affection for, and his military debt to,
the stricken horseman. Still, throughout the long day's fight at Spotsyl-
[ 224 ] THE CIVIL WAR35-1864
vania, he kept hoping that somehow Jeb would pull through this crisis,
as he had escaped so many other dangers over the past three years.
Late that night, however, shortly before the withdrawal to the line
still under construction across the base of the embattled salient, a second
message came; Stuart was gone. Lee put his hands over his face to
conceal his emotion. Presently he retired to his tent to master his
grief, and when one of the dead cavalryman's staff officers arrived to
tell him of Jeb's last minutes, back in Richmond, he remarked: "I can
scarcely think of him without weeping."
Directed by Grant, through Meade, to "cut loose from the Army
of the Potomac, pass around Lee's army, and attack his cavalry and
communications," Sheridan was determined not only to make the most
of the opportunity, which came his way as a result of the high-
tempered clash at headquarters earlier that same Sunday, May 8, but
also to do so in a style that was in keeping with his claim that, left to
the devices he had been urging all along, he could whip Jeb Stuart
out of his boots. "We are going out to fight Stuart's cavalry in conse-
quence of a suggestion from me," he told his three division commanders
that evening, and he added, by way of emphasizing the highly personal
nature of the challenge as he saw it: "In view of my recent representa-
tions to General Meade I shall expect nothing but success."
His method of assuring this was demonstrated at first light next
morning, back near Fredericksburg, when the march began down the
Telegraph Road, the main-traveled artery to Richmond. Riding four
abreast, accompanied by all 32 of their guns and such forage and
ordnance wagons as were needed, the 12,000 blue troopers comprised a
column thirteen miles in length. They moved not at a run or trot, and
not by separate, converging routes — both of which had been standard
procedure on raids in the past — but at a walk and in a single inspissated
column, compact as a fist clenched for striking on short notice. Not
much concerned with deception, and even less with speed, Sheridan's
dependence was on power, the ability of his three combined divisions
to ride through or over whatever got in their path. Previous raiders
had sought to avoid the fast-moving rebel horsemen, lest they be de-
layed or thwarted in their attempt to reach their assigned objectives;
but Sheridan's objective, so to speak, was just such a confrontation. He
defined the raid as "a challenge to Stuart for a cavalry duel behind
Lee's lines, in his own country," and the more there were of the gray
riders when the showdown was at hand, the better he would like it,
since that would mean there were more to be "smashed up." His con-
fidence was in numbers and the superiority of his horses and equip-
ment: as was shown within an hour of the outset, when the head of the
column ran into brisk fire from an enemy outpost line and stopped to
The Forty Days [ 225 ]
ponder the situation. Little Phil, as his troopers had taken to calling
him, came riding up and asked what was the matter. Skirmishers, he was
told — apparently in strength. "Cavalry or infantry?" he demanded,
and on being informed that they were cavalry, barked impatiently:
"Keep moving, boys. We're going on through. There isn't cavalry
enough in all the Southern Confederacy to stop us."
Southward the march led down across the Ni, the Po, the Ta,
and around the mazy sources of the Mat — four streams that combined
to contribute their waters and their names to the Mattaponi — until,
well in the rear of Lee's far right, the column turned off the Telegraph
Road and headed southwest for Chilesburg and the North Anna, three
miles beyond which lay Beaver Dam Station, Lee's advance supply base
on the Virginia Central Railroad. Stores of all kinds were collected
there, drawn from the Carolinas and the Shenandoah Valley; Sheridan
planned to "go through" them in the course of his move on Stuart and
the Confederate capital itself, which he would approach by the front
door, if it came within his reach, while Ben Butler's infantry was knock-
ing at the back. Torbert's division, still under Wesley Merritt, had the
lead, followed by Gregg and Wilson. Progress was steady all day long,
mainly because Sheridan refused to be distracted, whether by threats
or the rumor of threats, which were frequent, front and rear. When a
rebel brigade launched an attack on his rear guard south of the Ta,
for example, he simply detached one of Gregg's brigades as a reinforce-
ment and kept the main body moving at the deliberate pace he had set
at the start, on the far side of the Ni. Just before dusk the North Anna
came in sight; Merritt crossed with his three brigades while the other
two divisions went into camp on the near bank. Before long, the sky
was aglow in the direction Merritt had moved and the night breeze
was fragrant with the aroma of burning bacon, wafted northward all the
way from Beaver Dam.
Much of the burning — close to a million rations of meat and
better than half a million of bread, along with Lee's entire reserve of
medical stores — had been done by the depot guards themselves, who
fired the sheds to keep their contents out of the hands of the raiders.
First on the scene was the brigade of twenty-four-year-old Brigadier
General George A. Custer, Michiganders as skilled in wrecking as they
were in fighting. They added more than a hundred railway cars to the
conflagration, as well as two locomotives — one fourth of all the
Virginia Central had in operation at the time — and for lagniappe freed
378 Union soldiers, captured in the Wilderness and en route to prison
camps. After the excitement of all this, the horsemen bedded down for
a few hours' sleep by the fitful light of the fading embers of the
station, and were roused before dawn to get to work on the railroad
track. Ten miles in all were torn up, together with the telegraph wires
and poles that ran beside it, before the whooping troopers fell back
[226] THE CIVIL WAR^ 1864
into column to resume their march. Like their comrades on the north
bank, they were well rested despite their overnight carnival of destruc-
tion, having slept in one large bivouac that required few sentinels, rather
than in scattered groups requiring many. Reconsolidated, the three
divisions proceeded again at an energy-saving walk, a road-wide dusty
blue serpent more than a dozen miles long and crawling inexorably
south. So leisurely, so unperturbed was this horseback saunter through
the springtime greenness of Virginia — except of course for those engaged
in the rear-guard fret of fending off the rebels snapping persistently
at their heels — that the raiders had to remind themselves from time
to time that they were deep in enemy country, out for blood.
By late afternoon (Tuesday, May 10: Upton was massing for his
abortive penetration of Ewell's works, thirty air-line miles due north) the
head of the column reached Ground Squirrel Bridge on the South Anna,
and there in the grassy fields beside the river, well over halfway to
Richmond, Sheridan called a halt for the night. He might have kept
on; today's march had been a good deal shorter than yesterday's and
there were still a couple of daylight hours left; but this was an excellent
place to feed and water his mounts and rest his men. Besides, he not
only was in no hurry, he also reasoned that Stuart by now, as he said
later, was "urging his horses to the death so as to get in between
Richmond and our column," and he preferred it so.
He wanted Jeb to win the race, since only in that way would it
end in the confrontation he was seeking.
Stuart had accepted the gambit and was proceeding much as
Sheridan supposed: with one exception. Unlike his opponent, who had
stripped the Federal army of practically every horseman he could lay
hands on, the southern cavalry commander had resisted the temptation
to jump this latest adversary with everything he had, and instead of
leaving Lee to grope as blind as Grant was going to be for the next
week or two, had taken up the pursuit with only three of his six
brigades, some 4500 sabers opposing 12,000 engaged in what might turn
out to be an attempt to seize the scantly defended capital already
menaced by Butler's army from the far side of the James. One factor
in this decision to forgo a better chance at personal laurels was that he
could not know, until the Yankees cleared Beaver Dam on the morning
of the second day, whether their intention was to keep on riding south
for Richmond or turn north for a strike at Spotslyvania from the rear,
in which case Lee of course would need all the help he could get,
especially from his cavalry. As a result of this limiting decision, made
at the outset, Stuart knew as well as Sheridan did that, in light of the
numerical odds prevailing, the confrontation could have only one
result if it was head-on; Sheridan — whose three well-mounted divisions
were equipped with rapid-fire carbines, whereas the three gray brigades
The Forty Days
[227]
were armed with single-shot
muzzle loaders and mounted on
crowbait horses — would ride
right over him. Stuart's solution,
in considering this dilemma, was
not to avoid the confrontation,
despite the likelihood that it
would be disastrous on those
terms, but rather to arrange for
it to be something other than
head-on and to get what assist-
ance he could from the Rich-
mond garrison, scant as it was,
when the march of the two col-
umns intersected in the vicinity
of the threatened capital.
Whatever he lacked in
comparative strength — even at
the outset of the raid, before his
underfed, short-winded horses
started breaking down from the
strain of the chase — there was at
least no diminution of his accus-
tomed vigilance and vigor. Press-
ing close in rear of the outsized
blue formation with one of Fitz
Lee's brigades, he sent for Fitz
and his other brigade, as well
as Brigadier General James B.
Gordon's brigade of W. H. F. Lee's division, and with these three took up
the pursuit in earnest, first down the Telegraph Road, then southeast to the
North Anna, beyond which, as night came down, he saw to his distress
the spreading reflection of the flames at Beaver Dam, where a three-
week supply of food went up in smoke while the men for whom it had
been intended went hungry in the Spotsylvania woods. In just one day,
by this one blow, Sheridan had accomplished more than any of his
predecessors had managed to do in the past three years. What was worse,
with Richmond not much farther south than he had come already, he
seemed likely to accomplish a great deal more, unless Stuart found
some way to check or divert him. Up to now, the grayjackets had been
limited to attacks on the Union rear, since to have doubled the blue
column for a strike at its head would have left the raiders free to turn
for an unmolested dash against the rear of Lee's intrenchments. By
next morning, though, with all the enemy horsemen over the North
Anna, proceeding south past the charred base they had destroyed the
[228] THE CIVIL WAR ^1864
night before, Stuart was free at least of that restriction; he could give
his full attention to covering Richmond, since that now seemed without
much doubt to be the Federal objective. Accordingly, he told Gordon
to keep his brigade of North Carolinians close on the tail of the blue
column, impeding it all he could, while Fitz Lee and his two Virginia
brigades, under Brigadier Generals Lunsford Lomax and Williams
Wickham, rode east along the Virginia Central to regain the Telegraph
Road, just this side of Hanover Junction, and hurry down it to take up a
position in which to intercept the raiders before they got to Richmond.
A message went to Braxton Bragg, informing him of the danger to the
capital in his charge. Stuart hoped to be reinforced from the city's
garrison in time for the confrontation on its outskirts, but if Sheridan
brushed past him, he told Bragg, "I will certainly move in his rear and
do what I can."
So much for intention; execution, he knew, would be a larger
order. However, before setting out to catch up with Fitz, Jeb took
advantage of an opportunity Sheridan had unwittingly given him to
call on his wife Flora and their two children, who were visiting on a
plantation near Beaver Dam Station, thought until yesterday to be a
place of safety from the Yankees. She came out to meet him on the
front steps of the house, and though he did not take the time to dis-
mount, he at least had the satisfaction of leaning down from the saddle
to kiss her hello and goodbye before continuing on his way. The parting
had a somber effect on the normally jovial cavalier. So many goodbyes
by so many soldiers had turned out to be last goodbyes in the course
of the past three years, and today was the anniversary, moreover, of
the death of his great and good friend Stonewall Jackson. Stuart rode
in silence for a time before he spoke to his only companion, a staff
major, on a theme he seldom touched. He did not expect to survive the
war, he said, and he did not want to live anyhow if the South went down
in defeat.
Sheridan's calculation that his adversary would be "urging his
horses to the death so as to get in between Richmond and our column"
was nearly confirmed quite literally that night. Tireless himself, Jeb
was not inclined to have much patience with tiredness in others. "We
must substitute esprit for numbers," he had declared in the early days of
the war, adding in partial explanation, not only of his exuberant fox-
hunt manner, but also for the gaudy uniform — red-lined cape, bright
yellow sash, black ostrich plume, and golden spurs — he wore with such
flamboyance, on and off the field of battle: "I strive to inculcate in my
men the spirit of the chase." Overtaking Fitz Lee soon after dark near
Hanover Junction, he learned from Gordon, who sent a courier cross
country, that the Federals had made an early halt that afternoon at
Ground Squirrel Bridge on the South Anna. This was within twenty
miles of Richmond, five miles closer than Stuart himself was at the time;
The Forty Days [ 229 ]
Jeb was all for pushing ahead on an all-night march, until Fitz persuaded
him that unless he stopped to feed and rest his weary mounts he would
arrive with no more than a handful of troopers, the remainder having
been left behind to clutter the road with broken-down horses. Stuart
relented, on condition that Fitz would have his men back in the saddle
by 1 a.m., but rode on himself for another few miles before he lay
down by the roadside to get a little sleep. Up and off again before the
dawn of May 1 1 — unaware, of course, that this was to be his last
day in the field — he crossed the South Anna at sunrise and passed the
farm where he had bivouacked, one month less than two years ago
tomorrow night, on the eve of his first "ride around McClellan," the
exploit that had made his name a household word. Nearing Ashland,
four miles south on the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac, he
found that a brigade of raiders, detached from the main column, had
struck the place the night before, burning a locomotive and a train
of cars, along with several government warehouses, while tearing up
six miles of track. Stuart quickened his pace at this evidence of what
might be in store for Richmond, fifteen miles away, unless he managed
to head the marauders off or force them into retreat by pitching into
their rear while they were attacking the works that ringed the city.
Today as yesterday, however, a staff officer who rode with him found
him inclined to speak of personal rather than of military matters. "He
was more quiet than usual, softer and more communicative," the
staffer observed, believing, as he later wrote, that Jeb somehow felt
"the shadow of the near future already upon him."
Informed by another courier from Gordon that the Federal main
body had resumed its march from Ground Squirrel Bridge this morning
on the Mountain Road from Louisa, Jeb found his problem as to the
choice of an interceptive position more or less solved before he got
there. Less than half a mile below the junction of the Mountain and
Telegraph roads, which came together to form Brook Turnpike, a
macadamized thoroughfare running the last six miles into Richmond,
was an abandoned stagecoach inn called Yellow Tavern, paintless now,
made derelict by progress, and set amid rolling, sparsely wooded fields
of grass and grain. Stuart arrived at 8 o'clock, ahead of his troops, and
after sending word to Bragg that he had won the race, proceeded at
once to plan his dispositions. Sporadic firing up the Mountain Road
confirmed that Gordon still was snapping terrierlike at the heels of the
Union column, as instructed, and gave warning that Fitz Lee not only
had no time to spare in getting ready to receive it, but also could expect
no reinforcements from Bragg on such brief notice. Stuart's decision
was to compromise between taking up a frontal and a flank position,
since the former would invite the powerful enemy force to run right
over him, while the latter would afford him little more than a chance
to pepper the blue troopers as they galloped past him, bound for Rich-
[ 2 3 o ] THECIVIL WAR^1864
mond. He had Fitz put Wickham on the right, one mile north of
Yellow Tavern, facing south into the V of the converging roads, and
Lomax on the left, his left advanced so that the two brigades came
together at an angle, presenting a concave front which allowed a con-
centration of fire upon whatever moved against them down the western
arm of the V. By 10 o'clock these dispositions were completed; Stuart
had his men in line, dismounted except for a single regiment, the ist
Virginia, which he held in reserve to be hurried wherever it was needed
most. Within another hour the enemy too had come up and was mass-
ing for attack.
This was approximately what Sheridan had been wanting all along,
and now that he had it he took care to make the most of it. Richmond
lay just ahead, the prize of prizes, but he was in no hurry; Richmond
would still be there tonight and tomorrow, whereas Stuart, with his
reputation for hairbreadth extractions, might skedaddle. From noon
until about 2 o'clock he reconnoitered the Confederate position, prob-
ing here and there to test its strength, then settled down in earnest, using
one brigade to hold off Gordon in his rear, two more to block the
turnpike escape route, and the remaining four against Fitz Lee, whom he
outnumbered two-to-one in men and three-to-one in guns. For another
two hours the fight was hot, sometimes hand to hand at critical points.
By 4 o'clock Sheridan had found what he believed was the key to Lee's
undoing, and orders went for Merritt to press the issue on the right,
crumpling Lomax to fling him back on Wickham, after which the
whole line would move forward to exploit the resultant confusion.
Merritt passed the order on to Custer, who promptly attacked with
two regiments mounted and the other two on foot as skirmishers,
striking hard for the left of the rebel line just north of Yellow Tavern.
Stuart was there, having sensed the point of greatest danger from
his command post near the center. A conspicuous target in his silk-
lined cape and nodding plume, he laughed at an aide's protest that he
was exposing himself unnecessarily. "I don't reckon there is any danger,"
he replied. For three years this had apparently been true for him, al-
though his clothes had been slit repeatedly by twittering bullets and he
once had half of his mustache clipped off by a stray round. Moreover, he
was encouraged by a dispatch from Bragg expressing the opinion that
he could hold the Richmond works with his 4000 local defense troops
and the help of three brigades of regulars he had ordered to join him
from the far side of the James, provided the raiders could be delayed
long enough for these reinforcements to make it across the river. Jeb
figured there had been time for that already, and once again was
proudly conscious of having carried out a difficult assignment, though
he was determined to gain still more by way of allowing a margin for
error. Arriving on the far left as the two Michigan regiments thundered
past in a charge on a section of guns just up the line, he drew his big
The Forty Days [231]
nine-shot LeMatt revolver and fired at the blue horsemen going by.
They took the guns, scattering the cannoneers, but soon came tumbling
back, some mounted and some unhorsed by a counterattack from the
1 st Virginia, which Fitz Lee threw at them. Stuart had ridden forward
to a fence, putting his horse's head across it between two of his butter-
nut soldiers in order to get as close as possible to the bluecoats coming
back. "Steady, men, steady!" he shouted, still firing his silver-chased
pistol at the enemy beyond the fence. "Give it to them!" Instead, it was
they who gave it to him: one of them anyhow. A dismounted private,
trotting past with his revolver drawn — John A. Huff of the 5th
Michigan, who had served a two-year hitch in a sharpshooter outfit,
winning a prize as the best marksman in his regiment, then returned
home and reenlisted under Custer, apparently out of boredom, though
at forty-five he was old for that branch of the service — took time to
fire, almost casually in passing, at the red-bearded officer thirty feet
away. Jeb's head dropped suddenly forward, so that his plumed hat
fell off, and he clapped one hand to his right side. "General, are you hit?"
one of the men alongside him cried as the blue trooper ran off down the
fence line, pistol smoking from the fire of that one unlucky shot. "I'm
afraid I am," Stuart replied calmly when the question was asked again.
"But don't worry, boys," he told the distressed soldiers gathering rapidly
around him; "Fitz will do as well for you as I have done."
They got him off his horse and did what they could to make him
comfortable while waiting for an ambulance. Fitz Lee came riding fast
when he heard of the wound, but Jeb sent him back at once to take
charge of the field. "Go ahead, Fitz, old fellow," he said. "I know you'll
do what is right." Then the ambulance came and they lifted him into it,
obviously in pain. Just as it started rearward a portion of the line gave
way and a number of flustered gray troopers made off across the field.
"Go back!" Stuart called after them, sitting up in his indignation despite
the wrench to his hurt side. "Go back and do your duty, as I have done
mine, and our country will be safe. Go back, go back!" Then he added,
though in different words, what he had told the staff major yesterday
about not wanting to survive the South's defeat: "I'd rather die than be
whipped!" Presently a surgeon and other members of his staff overtook
the mule-drawn ambulance and stopped it, out of range of the Federals,
for an examination of the wound. While his blood-stained sash was being
removed and his bullet-torn jacket opened, Stuart turned to Lieutenant
Walter Hullihen, a staff favorite, and addressed him by his nickname:
"Honeybun, how do I look in the face?" Hullihen lied — for his chief
was clearly in shock and getting weaker by the minute. "You are looking
all right, General," he replied. "You will be all right." Jeb mused on the
words, as if in doubt, knowing only too well what lay in store for a
gut-shot man. "Well, I don't know how this will turn out," he said at
last, "but if it is God's will that I shall die I am ready."
[232 ] THECIVIL WAR3T1864
By now the doctor had completed his examination and ordered
the ambulance to move on. He believed there was little chance for the
general's survival, but he wanted to get him to Richmond, and expert
medical attention, as soon as possible. An eighteen-year-old private
followed the vehicle for a time on horseback, looking in under the hood
at the anguished Stuart until it picked up speed and pulled away. "The
last thing I saw of him," the boy trooper later wrote, "he was lying flat
on his back in the ambulance, the mules running at a terrific pace, and he
was being jolted most unmercifully. He opened his eyes and looked at
me, and shook his head from side to side as much as to say, 'It's all over
with me.' He had folded arms and a look of resignation."
Fitz Lee by then had restored his line, and Sheridan, after prodding
it here and there for another hour, decided the time had come to move
on after all. Shadows were lengthening fast; moreover he had inter-
cepted a rebel dispatch urging Bragg to send substantial reinforcements.
So he broke off what he called "this obstinate contest" north of Yellow
Tavern, and pushed on down Brook Turnpike, through the outer works
of Richmond, to within earshot of the alarm bells tolling frantically in
the gathering darkness. This was the route Kilpatrick had taken ten
weeks ago, only to call a halt when he came under fire from the fortifica-
tions, and Little Phil had a similar reaction when he drew near the inter-
mediate line of defense, three miles from Capitol Square. "It is possible
that I might have captured the city of Richmond by assault," he would
report to Meade, "but the want of knowledge of your operations and
those of General Butler, and the facility with which the enemy could
throw in troops, made me abandon the attempt." His personal inclination
was to plunge on down the pike, over the earthworks and into the streets
of the town, though he knew he lacked the strength to stay there long;
"the greatest temptation of my life," he later called the prospect, looking
back. "I should have been the hero of the hour. I could have gone in and
burned and killed right and left. But I had learned this thing: that our
men knew what they were about. . . . They would have followed me,
but they would have known as well as I that the sacrifice was for no
permanent advantage."
Forbearance came hard, but he soon had other matters on his
mind. Withdrawal, under present circumstances, called for perhaps more
daring, and certainly more skill, then did staying where he was or going
in. Gordon was still clawing at his rear on Brook Turnpike, and Fitz
Lee was somewhere off in the darkness, hovering on his flank; Bragg,
for all he knew, had summoned any number of reinforcements from
beyond the James, and presently the confusion was compounded by a
howling wind- and rainstorm (the one that was giving Hancock so
much trouble, out on its fringes, on the night march into position for his
dawn assault on the toe of Ewell's Mule Shoe) so severe that the steeple
The Forty Days [ 233 ]
of old St John's Church, on the opposite side of Richmond, was blown
away. Sheridan turned eastward, headed for Meadow Bridge on the
Chickahominy, which he intended to cross at that point, putting the
river between him and his pursuers, and then recross, well downstream,
to find sanctuary within Butler's lines, as had been prearranged, at
Haxall's Landing on the James. In addition to the rain-lashed darkness,
which made any sense of direction hard to maintain, the march was
complicated by the presence of land mines in his path; "torpedoes,"
they were called, buried artillery projectiles equipped with trip wires,
and the first one encountered killed a number of horses and wounded
several men. Sheridan had an answer to that, however. Bringing a couple
of dozen prisoners forward to the head of the column, he made them
"get down on their knees, feel for the wires in the darkness, follow them
up and unearth the shells." Despite the delay he reached Meadow Bridge
at daylight: only to find that the rebels had set it afire the night before
to prevent his getaway. At the same time he discovered this, Bragg's
infantry came up in his rear and Fitz Lee's vengeance-minded troopers
descended whooping on his flank.
He faced Wilson and Gregg about to meet the double challenge,
and gave Merritt the task of repairing the bridge for a crossing. For-
tunately, last night's rain had put the fire out before the stringers and
ties burned through; a new floor could be improvised from fence rails.
While these were being collected and put in place, the two divisions
fighting rearward gave a good account of themselves, having acquired
by now some of the foxhunt jauntiness formerly limited to their gray-
clad adversaries. For example, when instructed by Sheridan to "hold
your position at all hazards while I arrange to withdraw the corps to the
north side of the river," James Wilson made a jocular reply. "Our hair
is badly entangled in [the enemy's] fingers and our nose firmly inserted
in his mouth. We shall, therefore, hold on here till something breaks."
Nothing broke; not in the blue ranks anyhow, though James Gordon
was mortally wounded on the other side, shot from his horse while
leading a charge by his brigade. Merritt finished his repair work in
short order and the three divisions withdrew, without heavy losses, to
camp for the night down the left bank of the Chickahominy, near the
old Gaines Mill battlefield. Proceeding by easy marches they rode past
other scenes from the Seven Days, including Malvern Hill, to Haxall's
Landing, which they reached on May 14. The raid was over, all but the
return, and Sheridan was greatly pleased with the results, not only be-
cause of the specific damage accomplished at Beaver Dam and Ashland,
but also because of other damage, no less grave for being more difficult
to assess. At a cost of 625 killed and wounded and missing, he had freed
nearly 400 Union prisoners and brought them with him into Butler's
lines, along with some 300 captive rebels. How many of the enemy he
had killed or wounded in the course of the raid he could not say, but
[234] THE CIVIL WAR35" 1864
he knew at least of one whose loss to Lee and the Confederacy was well-
nigh immeasurable. The killing of Jeb Stuart at Yellow Tavern, he de-
clared, "inflicted a blow from which entire recovery was impossible."
After three days' rest with Butler he was off to rejoin Grant. The
northward march was uneventful except for a rather spectacular demon-
stration, staged while crossing the high railroad bridge over Pamunkey
River, of the indestructibility of the army pack mule. Falling from a
height of thirty feet, one of these creatures — watched in amazement
by a regiment of troopers whose colonel recorded the incident in his
memoirs — "turned a somersault, struck an abutment, disappeared under
water, came up, and swam ashore without disturbing his pack." On
May 24 the three divisions rejoined the army they had left, two weeks
and one day ago, near Spotsylvania.
Stuart by then had been eleven days in his grave, not far from the
church that lost its steeple in the windstorm on the night he arrived from
Yellow Tavern. After six mortal hours of being jounced on rutted
country roads because the ambulance had to take a roundabout route to
avoid the raiders on the turnpike, he reached his wife's sister's house on
Grace Street at 1 1 o'clock that evening, and there, attended by four of
Richmond's leading physicians through another twenty hours of suffer-
ing, he made what was called "a good death" — a matter of considerable
importance in those days, from the historical as well as the religious point
of view. After sending word of his condition to his wife at Beaver Dam,
in hope that she and the children would reach him before the end, he
gave instructions for the disposition of his few belongings, including his
spurs and various horses. "My sword I leave to my son," the impromptu
will concluded. The night was a hard one, with stretches of delirium,
but toward morning he seemed to improve; an aide reported him "calm
and composed, in the full possession of his mind." Shortly after sunrise
on May 12, when the rumble of guns was heard from the north, he asked
what it meant, and on being told that part of the capital garrison had
gone out to work with the cavalry in an attempt to trap the raiders at
Meadow Bridge: "God grant that they may be successful," he said
fervently, then turned his head aside and returned with a sigh to the
matter at hand: "But I must be prepared for another world." Later that
morning the President arrived to sit briefly at his bedside. "General, how
do you feel?" he asked, taking the cavalryman's hand. "Easy; but willing
to die," Jeb said, "if God and my country think I have fulfilled my
destiny and done my duty."
Davis could scarcely believe the thirty-one-year-old Virginian was
near death; he seemed, he said afterward, "so calm, and physically so
strong." But one of the doctors, seeing the Chief Executive out, told him
there was no chance for Stuart's recovery. The bullet had pierced his
abdomen, causing heavy internal bleeding, and probably his liver and
stomach as well; "mortification" — peritonitis — had set in, and he was
The Forty Days [ 235 ]
not likely to see another dawn. That afternoon Jeb himself was told as
much. "Can I last the night?" he asked, realizing that his wife might not
arrive before tomorrow because of the damage to the railroad north of
Richmond, and received the doctor's answer: "I'm afraid the end is
near." Stuart nodded. "I am resigned, if it be God's will," he said. "I
would like to see my wife. But God's will be done." Near sunset he
asked a clergyman to lead in the singing of "Rock of Ages," and it was
painful to see the effort he made to join the slow chorus of the hymn.
"I am going fast now, I am resigned; God's will be done," he murmured.
That was shortly after 7 o'clock, and within another half hour he was
dead.
Flora Stuart and the children did not arrive until four hours later,
but were with him in plenty of time for the funeral next day at St James
Church and the burial in Hollywood Cemetery. There was no military
escort; the home guard was in the field and Lee could spare no soldiers
from the Spotsylvania line. Davis and Bragg were there, along with
other government dignitaries, but Fitz Lee's troopers were still out
after Sheridan, down the Peninsula. Such were the last rites for the
man John Sedgwick, dead himself for four days now, had called "the
greatest cavalry officer ever foaled in America."
"His achievements form a conspicuous part of the history of this
army, with which his name and services will be forever associated," Lee
was presently to declare in a general order mourning the fallen Jeb.
This was the hardest loss he had had to bear since the death of Jackson,
and coupled as it was with the disablement of Longstreet, the indisposi-
tion of A. P. Hill, and the increasing evidence that one-legged Ewell
would never fulfill the expectations which had attended his appointment
as Stonewall's successor, there was cause for despair in the Confederate
army, near exhaustion from its twenty-hour struggle for the Mule Shoe.
Fortunately, as if in respectful observation of Stuart's funeral fifty miles
away in Richmond, the following day was one of rest. For the next two
days, and into a third, rain fell steadily — "as if Heaven were trying to
wash up the blood as fast as the civilized barbarians were spilling it," a
South Carolina sergeant of artillery observed. Such killing as there was
was mostly done at long range, by cannoneers and snipers on both sides.
There was little actual fighting, only a lumbering shift by the Union
army, east and south. Lee conformed to cover Spotsylvania, extending
his right southward, beyond the courthouse, to the crossing of the Po.
The blue maneuver seemed quite purposeless, not at all like Grant; Lee
was puzzled. Unable to make out what the Federals were up to, if any-
thing, he remarked sadly to a companion: "Ah, Major, if my poor
friend Stuart were here I should know all about what those people
are doing."
[ 236] THE CIVIL WAR3T1864
Grant was not as quiescent as he seemed; anyhow he hadn't
meant to be. During the day of rest from his exertions of May 12 he
considered what to do to break the stalemate his headlong efforts had
produced. A move around Lee's left would draw the old fox into open
country, but in the absence of Sheridan's troopers Grant would be at a
disadvantage, maneuvering blind against a foe who still had half his
cavalry on hand. His decision, then, was to strike the enemy right by
shifting Warren from his own right to his left on a night march that
would end in a surprise attack at first light, May 14; Wright would
follow to extend the envelopment which, if successful, would turn Lee
out of his Spotsylvania works and expose him to destruction when he
retreated. Orders to effect this were issued before the day of rest was
over; but all that came of them was lumbering confusion and the loss of
many tempers. Floundering through roadless mud, rain-whipped under-
brush, and swollen creeks, the V Corps did not reach its jump-off posi-
tion on the Fredericksburg Road until 6 a.m., two hours behind schedule,
and had to spend the rest of the day collecting the thousands of mud-
caked stragglers left exhausted in its wake. The attack had to be called
off, and instead there followed another day of rest.
This time it was Wright who had a notion. The Confederates
having conformed to the Union movement by shifting Anderson to their
right, Wright suggested that a sudden reversal of last night's march —
left to right, instead of right to left — would provide a capital op-
portunity for a breakthrough on the rebel left, which had been thinned
to furnish troops for the extension of the line down to Snell's Bridge
on the Po. Grant liked and enlarged the plan to include Hancock,
setting dawn of May 18 as the time of attack. Reoccupying the aban-
doned Mule Shoe in the darkness of the preceding night, Hancock and
Wright were to assault the new works across its base, while Burnside
made a diversionary effort on their left and Warren stood by to join
them once the fortifications were overrun. That gave two full days for
getting ready; Grant wanted the thing done right, despite the mud.
Moreover, on the first of these two days the rain left off, letting the
roads begin to dry, and the second — May 17 — hastened the drying
process with a sun as hot as summer. Everything went smoothly and on
schedule: up to the point at which the six divisions moved into the Mule
Shoe in the darkness, under instructions to take up positions for the
4 a.m. assault. So much time was spent occupying and moving through
the first and second lines of the original intrenchments, undefended
though they were, that it was 8 o'clock before the troops were in position
to make the surprise attack that should have been launched four hours
ago, at the first blush of dawn.
It would not have been a surprise in any case, even if the attackers
had stayed on schedule. Rebel cavalry scouts, undistracted by the blue
troopers taking their rest at Haxall's Landing, and lookouts in the Spot-
The Forty Days [ 237 ]
sylvania belfry, surveying the Union rear with glasses, had reported the
countermovement yesterday. That left only the question of just where
on the left the blow was going to land, and this in turn was answered by
E well's outpost pickets, who came back in the night to announce that the
assault would be delivered from the Mule Shoe. At first the defenders
could not credit their luck; this must be a feint, designed to cover the
main effort elsewhere. An artillery major, whose battalion had lost eight
of its twelve guns in the dawn assault six days ago, reported later that
he and his cannoneers "could not believe a serious attempt would be
made to assail such a line as Ewell had, in open day, at such a distance,"
but he added that "when it was found that a real assault was to be made,
it was welcomed by the Confederates as a chance to pay off old scores."
Pay them off they did, and with a vengeance, from the muzzles of 29
guns commanding the gorge of the abandoned salient and the shell-
ripped woods beyond, first with round shot, then with case and canister
as the Federals pressed forward "in successive lines, apparently several
brigades deep, well aligned and steady, without bands, but with flags
flying, a most magnificent and thrilling sight, covering Ewell's whole
front as far as could be seen." The conclusion was foregone, but the
gunners made the most of their opportunity while it lasted. Double-
timing over the mangled corpses of the fallen, the attackers managed to
reach the abatis at scattered points, only to find the fire unendurable
at that range. They fell back with heavy losses and the worst wounds
of the campaign, and when they reentered the woods they had emerged
from such a short time back, the guns fell silent, not out of mercy, but
simply to save ammunition in case the attack was resumed. It was not.
"We found the enemy so strongly intrenched," Meade admitted in a
letter to his wife, "that even Grant thought it useless to knock our heads
against a brick wall, and directed a suspension." By 10 o'clock the one-
sided carnage was over, and nowhere along the line had the opposing
infantry come to grips. "This attack fairly illustrates the immense power
of artillery well handled," Ewell's chief of artillery said proudly.
Perhaps by now, if not earlier, Grant had learned the error of his
statement to Halleck, a week ago today: "I am satisfied the enemy are
very shaky." By now perhaps he also had discovered the basis for what
had seemed to him the overexaltation of Lee by many high-ranking
Federals, who had not agreed with their new general-in-chief that the
Virginian would be likely to fall back in haste from the Rapidan when
he found the blue army on his flank. "Lee is not retreating," Colonel
Theodore Lyman of jMeade's staff wrote home that night. "He is a brave
and skillful soldier and will fight while he has a division or a day's rations
left." As for the troops who served the gray commander, wretchedly
fed and clad though they were, Lyman considered them anything but
shaky. "These rebels are not half starved," he added. "A more sinewy,
tawny, formidable-looking set of men could not be. In education they
[ 238] THE CIVIL WAR35-1864
are certainly inferior to our native-born people, but they are usually
very quick-witted, and they know enough to handle weapons with
terrible effect. Their great characteristic is their stoical manliness. They
never beg or whimper or complain, but look you straight in the face
with as little animosity as if they had never heard a gun fired." Indeed,
at this stage of the contest, there was a good deal more disaffection in the
Union than there was in the Confederate ranks. "We fought here. We
charged there. We accomplished nothing," a blue artillerist complained,
while a disgruntled infantryman protested specifically, in the wake of
this second Mule Shoe fiasco, that the army was being mishandled from
the top. The Wilderness had been "a soldier's battle," he said, in which
no one could see what he was doing anyhow. "The enlisted men did not
expect much generalship to be shown. All they expected was to have
battle-torn portions of the line fed with fresh troops. There was no
chance for a display of military talent." But that was not the case at
Spotsylvania, he went on. "Here the Confederates are strongly in-
trenched, and it was the duty of our generals to know the strength of the
works before they launched the army against them." He was bitter, and
the bitterness was spreading: not without cause. There was a saying in
the army, "A man likes to get the worth of his life if he gives it," and
the survivors here could not see that their fallen comrades, shot down in
close-packed masses flung off-schedule against impregnable intrench-
ments, had gotten the smallest fraction of the worth of theirs.
Whatever else he saw (or failed to see; he was admittedly not
much given to engaging in hindsighted introspection) Grant saw clearly
enough that something else he had said in the week-old letter to Halleck
was going to have to be revised, despite the wide publicity it had re-
ceived in the newspaper version: "I propose to fight it out on this
line if it takes all summer." Stalemate was little better than defeat, in his
opinion, and yet — having assaulted headlong twice, without appreciable
success, and tried in vain to turn both enemy flanks — that seemed the
best he could do in this location. Ten May days were a long way short
of "all summer," yet they sufficed to show that he had nothing to gain
from continuing the contest on "this line." So he decided, quite simply,
to abandon it: not, of course, by retreating (retreat never entered his
mind) but by shifting his weight once more with a wide swing around
Lee's right, in the hope once more that he would catch him napping.
Still without his cavalry to serve as a screen for the movement and keep
him informed of his adversary's reaction — although it was true Sheri-
dan had failed him in both offices before — he decided to try a different
method of achieving Lee's destruction. He would mousetrap him.
Hancock was to be the bait. Grant's plan, as set forth in orders
issued next morning, May 19, was for the II Corps to march that night
to the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac Railroad, six miles east,
then down it on the far side of the Mattaponi River to Milford Station,
The Forty Days [ 239 ]
well beyond Lee's flank and deep in his right rear. Lee could be expected
to try to overtake and destroy Hancock, and this would mean that he
would be exposed to the same treatment by Grant, who would give
Hancock about a twenty-mile head start before moving out with the
other three corps for a leap at the gray army whose attention would be
fixed on the bright lure dangling off its flank, beyond the Mattaponi.
That was the plan, and there was about it a certain poetic justice, since it
was a fairly faithful reproduction of what Lee himself had done to Pope
on the plains of Manassas — except that he had lacked the strength to
follow it through to the Cannae he was seeking, whereas Grant did not,
having just received about half of the more than 30,000 reinforcements
sent from Washington over a ten-day period starting four days ago. By
way of preparation for the move, he shifted Burnside around to the far
left on May 18, returned Wright to his former position alongside
Warren, and placed Hancock in reserve beyond the Ni, ready to take
off promptly the following night on the march designed to lure Lee out
of his Spotsylvania intrenchments and into open country, where he
would be exposed to slaughter.
First, though, there was a delay involving bloodshed. On the day
whose close was scheduled to see Hancock set out eastward, Lee lashed
out at the denuded Federal right.
Alert to the possibility that Grant might steal a march on him, the
Confederate commander, on receiving word that morning that the
Federals had resumed their ponderous sidle to his right, ordered Ewell,
who held the left, to test the validity of the report by making a demon-
stration to his front. Though he was down to about 6000 effectives —
considerably less than half his infantry strength two weeks ago, when he
opened the fight in the Wilderness — Ewell, feeling perky as a result of
his easy repulse of yesterday's assault, asked if he might avoid the risk
of a costly frontal attack, in case the Yankees were still there, by con-
ducting a flank operation. Lee was willing, and Ewell took off shortly
after noon on a reconnaissance in force around the end of the empty-
looking — and, as it turned out, empty — Union works. Accompanied
by Hampton's two brigades of cavalry, he carried only six of his guns
along because of the spongy condition of the roads, and even these he
sent back when he reached the Ni, about 3 o'clock, and found the mud
too deep for them to make it over, although Hampton managed to get
his four lighter pieces across by doubling the teams. So far, Old Bald
Head had encountered nothing blue; but presently, he reported, less than
a mile beyond the river, on his own in what had been the Federal right
rear, "I came upon the enemy prepared to meet me."
What he "came upon" was Warren's flank division, posted beyond
the Ni as a covering force for Hancock, whose corps was getting ready
to take off eastward after sundown. Responding to orders from head-
quarters to reinforce Warren instead, Hancock sent his largest division
240
THE CIVIL WAR
1864
first — a new one, just arrived the day before from Washington, under
Brigadier General Robert Tyler — and followed with Birney's three
bled-down brigades. Tyler had been a heavy artilleryman until recently,
and so had all his men, except that, unlike him, they had seen no combat
up to now. Their reception by the Army of the Potomac was unkind, to
say the least. In addition to the usual taunts — "Why, dearest, did you
leave your earthworks behind you?" — they were greeted by the
veterans, who were returning from their botched and bloody assault
down the Mule Shoe, with a gruesome demonstration of what was likely
to happen to infantry in battle. "This is what you'll catch up yonder,"
the wounded told them, displaying shattered arms and other injuries
Ewell's batteries had inflicted at close range. One roadside group had a
mangled corpse which they kept covered with a blanket until one of the
oversized greenhorn regiments drew abreast, and then they would
uncover it with a flourish. The heavies had been singing as they marched,
perhaps to keep their courage up, but they fell silent under the impact
of this confrontation with what was left of a man who had been where
they were headed. As it happened, the attack was suspended before they
were committed. That was yesterday, however. This was today, and
they were about to discover at first hand what combat meant.
Ewell, having found what he came looking for — or, to put the
case more critically, having blundered into what he had been in search
of — would have been glad to withdraw without bloodshed, but the
bluecoats gave him no choice except to fight, not only at a numerical
disadvantage, but also without guns to take up the challenge from the
many turned against him. The resultant two-hour struggle, which began
about 5.30, might well have completed the destruction of Lee's Second
Corps if Wade Hampton had not managed to post his rapid-firing
battery of horse artillery where it could hold the enemy of! while Ewell
fell back across the Ni and returned under cover of darkness to his
intrenchments, minus another 900 of his men. The Federals lost a good
deal more — 1535 killed or wounded or missing, most of them Tyler's
— but at least they could claim a victory, having remained in control
of the field and taken no less than 472 prisoners. A larger gain was the
admission of the heavies to full membership in the army that had greeted
them with jeers the day before. They had made up in staunchness, even
veterans agreed, for what they lacked in skill. "Well, they got a little
mixed and didn't fight very tactically," one of their officers replied to a
question from a correspondent, "but they fought confounded plucky."
This last was good news for Grant, who was going to have to
depend increasingly on such replacements in the weeks ahead. Three
days ago, on May 16, with 12,000 of his cavalry away, his strength was
down to 56,124 effectives — less than half the number he had mustered
when he crossed the Rapidan, twelve days before. About 35,000 of the
absent were battle casualties, lost in the Wilderness and here at Spotsyl-
The Forty Days [ 241 ]
vania. Another 4000-odd had fallen sick and been sent to Washington
hospitals to recover or to die. The rest, a substantial 14,000, were de-
serters or men whose enlistments had expired, members of the first of
the thirty-six regiments scheduled for discharge when their time was
up in May and June. There was, therefore, much encouragement for
Grant in this May 19 evidence that he could count on the heavies, as
well as on the newly drafted troops among them, for staunchness during
the critical period in which they learned their bloody trade and became,
in their turn, veterans more or less like the men who had jeered at them
on their arrival but now would jeer no more. In any case, he depended
on them to lend their weight to whatever blows he decided to throw,
and he did not let his heavy losses for the past two weeks, on and off the
field of battle, deter him from his purpose, which was to whip the rebel
army in the process of maneuvering it back on Richmond. Today's affair
amounted to no more than an interruption, a twenty-four-hour delay.
He would move out tomorrow night, as planned: with one exception, one
revision prompted by Ewell's sortie across the Ni that afternoon, which
apparently served to remind Grant just how bloody-minded Bobby Lee
could be. Instead of sending Hancock well in advance of the other
o
three corps, to be dangled as bait on the east bank of the Mattaponi, he
decided to move at a much closer interval, lest the bait be gobbled be-
fore the rest of the army came up in support. Accordingly, orders were
sent, not only to Hancock, but also to Warren, Wright, and Burnside,
that the march to Milford Station would begin tomorrow night, May
20, and would be conducted with all possible secrecy — in the hope,
once more, of stealing a march on old man Lee.
But no amount of secrecy could hide what Lee already knew as a
result of Ewell's rather heavy-handed investigation of the Union disposi-
tions in his front. Grant had stripped his right for another shift in the
opposite direction, and Lee prepared for another interception, alerting all
three of his corps commanders to be ready to march at the tap of a
drum. Despite such precaution, the enemy would of course move first;
yet Lee had little fear that he would lose the pending race, whenever it
began. He had chosen Hanover Junction as his point of concentration
just beyond the North Anna, at the crossing of the two critical rail lines
back to Richmond. From there he believed he would be able to parry
any thrust the Federals were likely to attempt, and this time — unlike
the last, in the sprint for Spotsylvania — he would have the advantage of
the interior route of march, traveling the chord of the arc his adversary's
movement would necessarily describe. His confidence, in this as in much
else, was based on the events of the past two weeks; especially on a com-
parison of losses. Though he did not know the precise figures, even for
his own army, let alone Grant's — the latter had suffered a total of
36,065 casualties (17,666 in the Wilderness, 18,399 at Spotsylvania)
while Lee was losing barely half as many (just under 8000 in the Wilder-
242 ]
THE CIVIL WAR35- i 8 64
ness, just over 10,000 at Spotsylvania) — he knew that Grant's were
disproportionately heavy. No opponent, so far, had been able to sustain
such losses without removal from command or frustration of his plans by
Washington; nor, he hoped, would this one, despite his known tenacity
and his reported unconcern for costs. Lee's confidence was in himself
and in his men. "With the blessing of God, I trust we shall be able to
prevent General Grant from reaching Richmond," he had told the
President ten days ago, and that trust had been confirmed. Moreover,
though it was true the contemplated shift to Hanover Junction would
mean giving up half the region between his present position and the
capital in his rear, the line of the North Anna was one of great natural
strength, highly dangerous for an army attempting to cross it, as Grant's
would do, in the face of determined resistance. Besides, he was presently
to remind Davis, "[Grant's] difficulties will be increased as he advances,
and ours diminished."
One reason for this — in addition, that is, to the advantageous
lengthening and shortening of their respective lines of supply and com-
munication, vulnerable to attack by raiders and tedious to maintain —
was that Lee would be moving toward the first reinforcements he had
been able to count on, or even contemplate with any real degree of hope,
since the opening of Grant's triple-pronged offensive. The reason he
could count on them now was that two of the Federal prongs had, in
effect, been snapped off short in the course of the past week. Breckin-
ridge, out in the Shenandoah Valley, and Beauregard, on the far side
of the James, had scored tactical successes which served not only to
neutralize or abolish the separate threats from those directions by Franz
Sigel and Ben Butler, but also to convert at least a part of each of those
two outnumbered and hard-pressed Confederate forces into reserves,
available for rapid shipment by rail to the Army of Northern Virginia
from the south and west; which, incidentally, was still another reason
for Lee's choice of Hanover Junction, where the two lines met and
crossed from Richmond and the Valley, as his point of concentration
after leaving Spotsylvania. By May 20, with the evidence getting heavier
by the hour that the Federals in his immediate front were about to begin
their march around his right, Lee called on both victorious commanders
— Breckinridge by orders wired directly, since he was already under
his command, and Beauregard by means of an urgent request to the War
Department — to hasten the departure for Hanover Junction of every
soldier they could spare from those two fronts.
It was well that he specified haste, for the signs of Grant's immi-
nent departure continued to multiply all day. By nightfall Lee was so
convinced that the Federals were about to march that he decided to be-
gin his own next morning. Accordingly, he sent instructions for Ewell,
whose corps would peel off from the left in order to lead the movement
south, to start at daylight unless he saw an opening for a strike at the
The Forty Days [ 243 ]
enemy rear. Old Bald Head, finding no such opportunity, stepped off
at 4 a.m. A4ay 21 — a scant six hours, events would show, after Hancock
started out across the way.
X 3 X
Sigel's offensive, like his chief's, was subdivided into three columns of
penetration, each with a different preliminary objective to be attained
before all three combined for a linkup with Grant's main body in front
of Richmond. His own main body, consisting of about 8000 of all arms,
would march the length of the Shenandoah Valley, from Winchester to
Staunton, where he would strike the Virginia Central Railroad. Crook
meantime, with roughly the same number, would move west of the
Valley, southward in two columns, one of about 6000 infantry under
his personal direction, the other of about 2000 cavalry under Brigadier
General W. W. Averell, against the Virginia & Tennessee. Crook's ob-
jective was Dublin Station and the nearby railway bridge across New
River, Averell's the salt works and lead mines at Saltville and Wythe-
ville, a day's ride west of Dublin: from which point the two would
proceed east along the Virginia & Tennessee to Salem, tearing up track
as they went, and then turn north, through Lexington, for a hookup
with Sigel at Staunton and, subsequently, with Meade somewhere east
or southeast along the Virginia Central, which was to be given the
same hardhanded treatment as the reunited 16,000 moved along it to be
in on the kill when Lee was brought to bay.
Crook's being the more lucrative assignment, at least in the opening
stage of the campaign — salt and lead were rare necessities in the Con-
federacy, and the intended double blow at Saltville and Wytheville
would go far toward making them rarer — Sigel started first, on April
30, hoping to draw attention and troops away from the region beyond
the Alleghenies. It worked. By the time Crook's infantry set out from
Gauley Bridge on May 2, beginning the rugged trek from the Kanawha,
southward up the left bank of New River to Dublin Station, a round-
about distance of more than a hundred miles, the rebel department com-
mander was busy stripping Southwest Virginia of its few defenders in
order to get them aboard trains for rapid shipment to Staunton and a fast
march northward, down the turnpike, to challenge Sigel's bid for con-
trol of the wheat-rich Shenandoah Valley. Within another three days,
when Averell's mounted column began its parallel march on May 5
from Logan Courthouse, fifty miles southwest of Gauley Bridge, the
Confederate shift was well under way. Crook made good time, con-
sidering the nature of the terrain. At Shannon's Bridge by sunset of A4ay
8, only seven miles from Dublin, he learned that a rebel force was lying
in wait for him two miles ahead on a wooded spur of Cloyd's A4ountain.
[244] THE CIVIL WAR3T 1864
A fork-bearded West Pointer, Ohio born and thirty-five years old, a
veteran of Antietam and Chickamauga, he rode ahead next morning to
look the position over — and found it strong. "They may whip us,"
he said as he lowered his binoculars, "but I guess not."
He guessed right. The Confederate force of about 3000, part
militia and home guards, commanded by Brigadier General Albert
Jenkins, a former Charleston lawyer in what was now called West
Virginia, was routed by a charge in which one of Crook's brigade com-
manders, Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes, made a showing that stood
him in good stead when he ran for President twelve years later. Jenkins
was wounded and taken, along with two of his three guns and many
rifles dropped by his green troops when they fled; Union surgeons re-
moved his mangled arm and gave him such care as they had time for,
but he died the following week, thirty-three years old and still a captive.
His losses at Cloyd's Mountain numbered 538, the Federals' 643. Crook,
overcome by excitement and exhaustion — he had hurried about the
contested field with his waterproof boots full of water from crossing a
creek — fell to the ground in a faint as soon as he saw that the battle
was won, but revived in time, attended by his staff, to order an im-
mediate advance on Dublin and the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad, five
miles ahead. Arriving before dark, he put his men to work firing and
wrecking the depot installations, along with a large accumulation of
military stores, and set out at first light next morning, May 10, to destroy
the 400-foot wooden railway bridge across New River, eight miles east.
By midday it was burning briskly, and soon afterwards it collapsed with
a great hiss of steam into the river. "A fine scene it was," Hayes noted
in his diary.
Having thus carried out his preliminary assignment — marching
and fighting and wrecking, all three boldly and with skill — Crook now
had only to wait for Averell to join him and continue the movement as
planned, east along the railroad to Salem, then north through Lexington
for the meeting with Sigel at Staunton. Yet he did neither. He not only
declined to wait for the cavalry column, he also declined to press on
eastward in accordance with his orders. Instead he decided to return at
once to West Virginia: specifically to Meadow Bluff, on the Green-
brier River near Lewisburg, where he could draw supplies from Gauley
Bridge, his starting point some fifty miles northwest. His reason, as he
gave it two weeks later in his report, was that "I saw [at the Dublin
telegraph office] dispatches from Richmond stating that General Grant
had been repulsed and was retreating, which determined me to move
to Lewisburg as rapidly as possible." Isolated as he was, and accepting
the rebel claim at face value, he feared that Lee would send troops
west by rail from Orange to cut him off and up, and under pressure of
this fear he bolted for the fastness of the mountains. Not even the arrival
of outriders from Averell, bringing word that the troopers had found
The Forty Days
M5 1
Saltville too well guarded for attack but that the column was moving
on Wytheville even now, deterred Crook from making as quick a getaway
as he could manage. He simply replied that Averell was to do his best to
carry out the instructions he himself had just discarded, and took off
northward, well beyond New River, which he crossed upstream and
down. He made good time. It was five days later, May 15, before the
cavalry overtook him at Union, eight miles beyond the West Virginia
line.
Averell had a harrowing tale to tell: one that was unrelieved,
moreover, by any such tactical victory as Cloyd's Mountain or any
such gaudy feat as the demolition of New River Bridge. He had raided
in this direction before, with conspicuous success, including the burning
of Salem in December, but that had been done against next to no op-
position. This time there was not only a considerable force in opposition
— as he was told when he reached Tazewell on May 8, just this side of
the state line — it was also commanded by John Morgan, who was
known to be hungry for revenge for the indignities he had suffered in
the Ohio Penitentiary during the four months preceding his year-end
breakout. Now he was back in the field at last, having been rejoined by
about 750 of his "terrible men," survivors of the disastrous July raid
through Indiana and Ohio, and was posted at Abingdon to work with
local units in defense of a department including portions of Southwest
[ 246 ] THE CIVIL WAR5T1864
Virginia and East Tennessee. At Tazewell Averell learned that the
famed Kentuckian had shifted his headquarters and his troops to Salt-
ville when he got word that a blue column was headed that way. What
his strength was Averell did not know; he estimated it at 4500, better
than twice his own. Consequently, he decided to forgo the scheduled
destruction of the salt works, vital though they were to the Confed-
eracy's efforts to feed its armies, and to strike instead directly at Wythe-
ville and the lead mines, leaving Morgan holding the bag at Saltville. He
feinted in that direction on May 9, then swung east, riding hard to give
the rebels the slip. He thought he had succeeded until, approaching
Wytheville the following afternoon, he found Morgan drawn up to
meet him at a place called Crockett's Cove.
The position was admirably suited for defense, but that was not
what Morgan had in mind. Fuming because the approach of the enemy
column had delayed a projected return to his native Bluegrass, he
charged and struck and kept on charging and striking the rattled
Federals, who thus were afforded no chance to discover that they were
not outnumbered. "My men fought magnificently, driving them from
hill to hill," he wrote his wife that night. "It was certainly the greatest
sight I ever witnessed to see a handful of men driving such masses before
them. Averell fought his men elegantly, tried time and time again to
get them to charge, but our boys gave them no time to form." This was
Morgan's first engagement since the late-November jailbreak and he
made the most of it until darkness ended the running fight, four miles
east of Wytheville. He turned back then for Abingdon, to resume his
plans for another "ride" into Kentucky, and Averell, minus 114 of his
troopers, limped eastward to Dublin and beyond, where the railroad
bridge had toppled hissing into New River that afternoon. Informed by
his outriders that Crook had shied off into the mountains, he forded the
river and tore up another ten miles of track and culverts before turning
north to overtake his chief at Union on May 15. Hungry because
supplies were low, and lashed by heavy rains, the reunited column spent
two days getting over the swollen Greenbrier, then trudged upstream
to Meadow Bluff, May 19, on the verge of exhaustion.
Crook's infantry had been seventeen days on the march from
Gauley Bridge, the last eight without a regular issue of rations, and had
crossed seventeen mountain ranges, each a bit steeper, it seemed, than the
one before. They had accomplished little, aside from incidental damage
to the railroad and the destruction of the New River bridge, but Crook
was reassured to learn at Meadow Bluff that his superior, the major gen-
eral commanding the department, had accomplished even less in the
Shenandoah Valley. In fact, it now developed, the wide-swinging west-
ern column had been quite right not to press on east and north to
Staunton, as instructed, since Sigel had covered barely half the distance
from Winchester to that point, marching deliberately up the Valley
The Forty Days [ 247 ]
Pike, before he was obliged to turn and flee back down it, pursued by
the victors of the battle that had defined the limit of his penetration.
It was Breckinridge's doing, and he did it on his own. Hearing
from Lee in early May, while the Army of Northern Virginia was on its
way to the confrontation with Grant in the thickets south of the
Rapidan, that he was to assume "general direction of affairs" beyond the
Blue Ridge, the former U.S. Vice President, electoral runner-up to
Lincoln in the presidential race of i860, continued his efforts to collect
all movable troops in Southwest Virginia for a meeting with Sigel in
the Valley. "I trust you will drive the enemy back," Lee had told him,
and the tall, handsome Kentuckian, forty-three years old, with lustrous
eyes, a ponderous brow, and the drooped mustache of a Sicilian brigand,
was determined to do just that. Accordingly, he left the defense of the
western reaches of his department to Jenkins and Morgan, scant though
their resources would be in event of an attack, and set out for Staunton
at once, by rail, with two veteran brigades of infantry totaling just under
2500 men. North of there, and hard at work observing and impeding
Federal progress south of Winchester, was Brigadier General John D.
Imboden, whose 1500 cavalry were all that would stand in Sigel's path
until Breckinridge arrived. The Kentuckian reached Staunton on May
12 and set off promptly down the turnpike for New Market, forty
miles away, where Imboden was skirmishing with advance elements of
the blue main body, still a dozen miles to the north. Including these
butternut troopers, Breckinridge would go into battle with close to
5000 of all arms: a figure he attained by mustering all the militia round-
about — 750 at the most — and by summoning from Lexington the cadet
corps of the Virginia Military Institute, 247 strong, all under conscrip-
tion age and commanded by one of their professors, who later recalled
that although Breckinridge said he hoped to keep these fifteen-, sixteen-,
and seventeen-year-olds in reserve through the bloodiest part of the fight-
ing (thus to avoid what Jefferson Davis had referred to as "grinding the
seed corn of the nation") he added in all honesty that, "should occasion
require it, he would use them very freely."
Occasion was likely to require it. Pleased that he had succeeded in
drawing the rebels north and east, away from the now vulnerable in-
stallations in Southwest Virginia, Sigel was intent on completing his
preliminary assignment by winning control of the Shenandoah Valley
before the wheat in its fields was ripe for grinding into flour to feed
Lee's army. This would entail whipping the gray force gathering to meet
him, and he marched south with that welcome task in mind, anticipating
his first victory since Pea Ridge, out in Arkansas more than two years
ago, for which he had been made a major general. All the battles he had
been involved in since that time, however slightly, had been defeats —
Second Bull Run and Fredericksburg were examples — with the result
that his demonstrations of military competence had been limited to the
[248] THECIVIL WAR35-1864
conduct of retreats. A book soldier, academy-trained in his native Ger-
many, which he had fled in his mid-twenties after serving as Minister of
War in the revolution of 1 848, he was anxious to win the glory he had
prepared for, though he did not let ambition make him rash. Advancing
from Winchester, up the turnpike that led ninety miles to Staunton, he
moved with skill and proper deliberation. There were mishaps, such as
the loss of 464 men in a cavalry regiment surprised and captured by
Imboden while on outpost duty beyond Front Royal, May 1 1 , but
Sigel knew how to accept such incidental reverses without distraction,
even though this one, combined with the need for detaching troops to
guard his lengthening supply line, reduced his combat strength to
roughly 6500 of all arms. Past Strasburg by then, he kept his mind on the
job ahead and continued his march up the pike to Mount Jackson,
terminus of the Manassas Gap Railroad, on May 14. This was only seven
miles from New Market, occupation of which would give him control
of the single road across Massanutton Mountain and thus secure his left
flank practically all the rest of the way to Staunton. He had sent his
cavalry ahead to seize the crossing of the north fork of the Shenandoah
River, two miles south of A4ount Jackson, and when they arrived that
afternoon they were taken under fire by a rebel battery posted on a
height just over a mile beyond the bridge. They settled down to a
brisk artillery exchange, preparing to force a crossing, but Sigel — per-
haps recalling what had happened three days ago, when nearly 500 other
troopers had been gobbled up near Front Royal — sent word that he
preferred to wait until the infantry came up next morning, when all
arms would combine to do the thing in style.
Breckinridge was within earshot of the cannonade. Just arrived
from Staunton with his two brigades, plus the VMI cadets, he was taking
a late afternoon dinner with Imboden at Lacy Springs, a dozen miles
to the south, and when he heard the guns begin to rumble he told the
cavalryman to return at once to New Market, hold the crossing of the
North Fork till dark if possible, then fall back to a position just this side
of the town, where he would join him before daybreak. Imboden, with
Sigel's cooperation, carried out these instructions to the letter. Awak-
ened at dawn by the arrival of the infantry — Sunday, May 15 — he
assisted in getting the troops in line for what was intended to be a de-
fensive battle. But when sunrise gave a clear view of the field, Breckin-
ridge studied it carefully through his glasses and changed his mind.
Sigel's men had crossed the river at first light to take up a position
astride the turnpike north of town, and the Kentuckian apparently liked
the looks of what he saw. "We can attack and whip them here," he said.
"I'll do it."
And did. While the Confederates were adjusting their dispositions
for attack, the guns on both sides — 28 of them Union, opposed by
half as many firing north — began exchanging long-range shots across
The Forty Days [ 249 ]
the rooftops of the town. This continued for an hour, at the end of
which the gray line started forward, one brigade on the right, the other
on the left, with a regiment of dismounted cavalry between them on the
pike, supported by the cadets whose spruce uniforms had resulted in
their being greeted with cat-calls by veterans on the march; "Katydids,"
they called them. Imboden struck first with a horseback charge through
some woods on the right, and the infantry went forward through the
town, cheered by citizens who came running out to meet them. On the
far side, they scattered the blue pickets, then went for the main line.
Sigel disengaged skillfully and fell back half a mile, disposing his troops
on high ground to the left and right of a hillock on which a six-gun
battery was slamming rapid-fire shots into the ranks of the advancing
rebels. Spotting this as the key to the position, Breckinridge ordered
the dismounted troopers to charge and take it, supported by the
cadets; which they did, though only by the hardest, not only because of
heavy fire from the well-served artillery, but also because of a gully to
their front, less than two hundred yards from the fuming line of guns
and floored with what turned out to be calf-deep mud. Moreover, as
the movement progressed, it was the troopers who were in support.
Lighter, more agile, and above all more ardent, the cadets made better
time across the soft-bottomed depression, and though they were hit
repeatedly with point-blank canister, they soon were among the
cannoneers, having suffered better than twenty percent casualties in
the charge: 8 killed and 46 wounded. Slathered with clay and stained
by smoke, many of them barefoot, having lost their shoes and socks in
the mud of the gully, the survivors were scarcely recognizable as
yesterday's dapper Katydids. But they carried the position. "A wild
yell went up," Imboden would remember, "when a cadet mounted a
caisson and waved the Institute flag in triumph over it."
Sigel was in his element. Lean-faced and eager, not yet forty, his
lank hair brushed dramatically back to bring out his sharp features and
brief chin beard, he maintained an icy, steel-eyed posture under fire,
but betrayed his inner excitement by snapping his fingers disdainfully
at shellbursts as he rode about, barking orders at his staff. Unfortunately,
he barked them in German, which resulted in some confusion: as, for
example, when he directed that two companies of a West Virginia
regiment move up to protect the six-gun battery under attack by the
cadets. "To my surprise," he later protested, "there was no disposition to
advance. In fact, in spite of entreaties and reproaches, the men could not
be moved an inch!" And when the rest of the gray line surged forward
to take advantage of the respite gained by the boy soldiers, there was
nothing Sigel could do but attempt another displacement, and this he
did, as skillfully as he had performed the first, though at a considerably
higher cost. By now he was back on the knoll from which the rebel
horse artillery had challenged his crossing of the river yesterday, four
[250] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
miles north of town. He held on there, through a lull occasioned by the
need for refilling the cartridge boxes of the attackers, and when they
came on again he fell back across the North Fork, burning the bridge
behind him. Secure from pursuit, at least for the present, he intended
to stand his ground despite heavy losses (831 killed and wounded and
missing, as compared to the enemy's 577) but decided a better course
would be to retire to Mount Jackson, where he could rest and refit
before resuming his interrupted southward march. He got there around
7 o'clock that evening, took up a stout position, and remained in it
about two hours before concluding that the wisest course, after all,
would be to return to Strasburg, another twenty miles back down the
pike. A night march got him there the following afternoon, and after
one more trifling readjustment — rearward across Cedar Creek next
morning, May 17, to make camp on the heights he had left a week
ago — he finished his long withdrawal from the unfortunate field of
New Market and began making incisive preparations for a return.
But that was not to be; not for Sigel at any rate. Stymied at
Spotsylvania, Grant was growing impatient at having heard nothing of
or from his director of operations beyond the Blue Ridge. "Cannot
General Sigel go up Shenandoah Valley to Staunton?" he wired Halleck,
who replied that, far from advancing, Sigel was "already in full retreat.
... If you expect anything from him you will be mistaken," Halleck
added. "He will do nothing but run. He never did anything else."
Grant was furious: about as much so as he was with Banks, whose Red
River fiasco came to an end that same week. Four days later, on May 2 1,
Franz Sigel was relieved of his over-all command.
Lee on the other hand was delighted with his lieutenant's conduct
of affairs in that direction, and was quick to express his gratitude. "I
offer you the thanks of this army for the victory over General Sigel,"
he wired Breckinridge on the morning after the battle. "Press him down
the Valley, and if practicable follow him into Maryland." This last was
in line with the suggestion he had made to Stonewall Jackson, two years
ago today, at the outset of the campaign that had frightened the Wash-
ington authorities into withholding troops from McClellan's drive on
Richmond, and he hoped that it might have the same effect on Grant's
more energetic effort. In any event, New Market had saved the wheat
crop in what was called "the bread basket of Virginia," and even if
Breckinridge lacked the strength to undertake a crossing of the Potomac,
it at least freed a portion of his command to reinforce the army north
of Richmond. Lee, in a follow-up telegram that same day, left the de-
cision to the general on the scene. "If you can follow Sigel into Mary-
land, you will do more good than by joining us," he wired. "[But] if
you cannot, and your command is not otherwise needed in the Valley
or in your department, I desire you to prepare to join me."
Breckinridge answered next morning that he preferred the latter
The Forty Days [ 251 ]
course. He would move, he said, with 2500 men. Anticipating the shift
from Spotsylvania, Lee replied: "Proceed with infantry to Hanover
Junction by railroad. Cavalry, if available, can march."
That was on May 17, the day when news of a greater victory,
together with the promise of much heavier reinforcements, was relayed
to Lee from Beauregard, twelve days into a campaign that began with
every prospect of a Union triumph, south of the James, and ended
quite the other way around. Indeed, nothing could better illustrate the
abruptness with which fortune's frown and smile were interchangeable
than the contrast between the elation of Richmond's citizens on that date
and the gloom that had descended on May 5, when they learned from
downstream lookouts that an amphibious column ten miles long, con-
taining no less than two hundred enemy vessels, was steaming up the
river that laved the city's doorstep. Loaded at Yorktown the day be-
fore — while Grant was crossing the Rapidan — the armada had
rounded the tip of the York-James peninsula in the night, and now,
with the morning sun glinting brilliant on the water — and Grant and
Lee locked in savage combat, eighty miles to the north — it was pro-
ceeding up the broad, shining reaches of the James.
Five ironclads led the way and other warships were interspersed
along the line of transports, a motley array of converted ferries, tugs
and coasters, barges and canal boats, whose decks were blue with 30,000
soldiers, all proud to be playing a role in what seemed to one of them
"some grand national pageant." What was more, they had a commander
who knew how to supply the epitomizing gesture. Riding in the lead,
Ben Butler brought his headquarters boat about, struck a pose on the
hurricane deck, and steamed back down the line. As he sped past each
transport, past the soldiers gaping from its rail, he swung his hat in a
wide vertical arc toward the west and lurched his bulky torso in that
direction, indicating their upstream goal and emphasizing his belief
that nothing could stop them from reaching it in short order. Unaware
that within two weeks he and they were to wind up caged — or, as
his superior was to put it, "corked" — they cheered him wildly from
ship after ship as he went by, then cheered again, even more wildly, as
he turned and churned back up the line, still waving his hat and lunging
his body toward Richmond.
After dropping one division off at City Point, within nine miles
of Petersburg, the flotilla proceeded north, past the adjoining mouth of
the Appomattox River, and debarked the other five divisions at Ber-
muda Hundred, a plantation landing eighteen crow-flight miles from
the rebel capital. Ashore, as afloat, the gesticulating Butler rode with
the van, and close up he was even stranger-looking than he had been
when viewed across the water; "the strangest sight on a horse you ever
[2 5 2]
THE CIVIL WAR»* i8 64
JUckmnd f
5miks '
Deep Movent
Bottom Hill
saw," one witness thought, attempting a word portrait of the former
Massachusetts senator who shared with Banks, though he was more than
a year his junior at forty-five, the distinction of being the U.S. Army's
ranking active major general. "With his head set immediately on a
stout, shapeless body, his very squinting eyes, and a set of legs and arms
that look as if made for somebody else and hastily glued to him by
mistake, he presents a combination of Victor Emmanuel, Aesop, and
Richard III, which is very confusing to the mind. Add to this a horse
with a kind of rapid, ambling trot that shakes about the arms, legs, etc.
till you don't feel quite sure whether it is a centaur or what it is, and
you have a picture of this celebrated General."
Despite the neckless, bloated look, the oddly assorted members,
and the disconcerting squint of his mismatched eyes, Butler was all
business here today. Mindful of Grant's injunction that he was to "use
every exertion to secure footing as far up the south side of the river as
you can, and as soon as you can," he landed the bulk of his army just
short of the first of the half dozen looping bends or "curls" of the James,
where the Confederates had
heavy-caliber guns sited high on
the steep bluffs to discourage
efforts to approach the city by
water, and next morning he be-
gan to comply with another item
in his instructions: "Fortify, or
rather intrench, at once, and con-
centrate all your troops for the
field there as rapidly as you can."
Five miles west of Bermuda
Hundred, between Farrar's Is-
land and Port Walthall, the
James and the Appomattox were
less than four miles apart. By
intrenching this line he would
be safe from a frontal attack,
while the rivers secured his flanks and rear. It was true, the Bermuda de-
barkation required a crossing of the Appomattox to reach either City
Point or Petersburg, but this was better, Butler reasoned — bearing in
mind Grant's double-barreled admonition "that Richmond is to be your
objective point, and that there is to be cooperation between your force and
the Army of the Potomac" — than having to cross it in order to reach the
fattest and probably best-defended prize of all. By sundown of May 6, his
first full day ashore, he not only had completed the preliminary intrench-
ment of the line connecting the bends of the two rivers, he also had
sent a brigade of infantry another two or three miles west to look into
the possibility of cutting the railroad between Petersburg and Richmond,
tyeftrsburg
o Mitts 5
The Forty Days [ 253 ]
which in turn afforded the rebel defenders their only rail connection
with the Carolinas and the reinforcements they no doubt were calling
for, even now, in their distress at his appearance on their doorstep.
Encouraged by a report from the brigadier who conducted the
reconnaissance (he had run into spirited resistance on the turnpike, half
a mile short of the railroad, but nothing that could not be brushed aside,
he thought, by a more substantial force) Butler decided next morning to
go for the railroad in strength, then turn southward down it to knock
out Petersburg and thus assure that his rear would be unmolested when
he swung north to deal with Richmond. While the others kept busy with
axes and spades, improving the earthworks protecting their base from
attack, four of the fourteen brigades in the two corps, each of which
had three divisions, moved out to attend to this preamble to the main
effort: three from Gillmore and one from Major General W. F. Smith,
whose third division had debarked at City Point and was still there,
despite his protest that it "might as well have been back in Fort Monroe."
The march was along the spur track from Port Walthall, and their
initial objective was its junction with the trunk line, three miles west.
As they approached it around midday, a spatter of fire from the skir-
mishers out front informed them that the junction — grandly styled
Port Walthall Junction, though all it contained was a run-down depot
and a couple of dilapidated shacks — was defended. The four brigades
came up in turn to add their weight to the pressure being exerted, but
the rebels either were there in heavy numbers or else they were de-
termined not to yield, whatever the odds. This continued for two
hours, in the course of which the Federals managed to overlap one gray
flank and tear up about a quarter mile of track on the main line. But
that was all. At 4 o'clock, having suffered 289 casualties, Butler decided
to pull back behind his fortifications and return in greater strength to-
morrow; or, as it turned out, the day after.
Both good and bad news awaited him, back on Bermuda Neck.
The bad was from the navy, which had sent a squadron out the day
before to investigate an account by a runaway slave that the Confeder-
ates had torpedoes planted thickly in the James, especially in the
vicinity of Deep Bottom, a dozen miles up the winding river from
Bermuda Hundred. It was all too true: as the crew of the big double-
ender Commodore Jones found out, about 2 o'clock that afternoon. A
2000-pound torpedo, sunk there some months ago and connected by
wires to galvanic batteries on the bank, "exploded directly under the
ship with terrible effect, causing her destruction instantly." So her
captain later reported from a bed in the Norfolk Naval Hospital. An-
other witness, less disconcerted because he was less involved, being
aboard another gunboat, went into more detail. "It seemed as if the
bottom of the river was torn up and blown through the vessel itself,"
he wrote. "The Jones was lifted almost entirely clear of the water, and
[254] THE CIVIL WAR»" 1864
she burst in the air like an exploding firecracker. She was in small pieces
when she struck the water again." For days, bodies and parts of bodies
floated up and were fished out of the James; the death toll was finally
put at 69. Just now, though, the problem of how to keep the same thing
from happening over and over again was solved by the capture of two
men caught lurking in the brush where the batteries were cached.
They had triggered the explosion, and what was more they had helped
to plant other such charges up ahead. They refused to talk, however,
until one of them was placed in the bow of the lead vessel and the
squadron continued its upstream probe: whereupon, in the words of
an interrogator, he "signified his willingness to tell all."
That more or less solved the problem of torpedoes (in any case,
of the ones already planted; future sowings were of course another
matter) but next day, about the time the four brigades began their
skirmish down the spur track from Port Walthall, the navy was given
a violent reminder that older dangers, familiar to sailors long before any-
one thought of exploding powder under water, still threatened the exist-
ence of the fleet. U.S.S. Shaivneen, a 1 80-ton sidewheel gunboat on patrol
at Turkey Bend, dropped anchor under the loom of Malvern Hill to
give her crew time out for the midday meal, only to have it interrupted
when a masked battery and four companies of Confederate infantry
opened fire from the north bank, peppering the decks with bullets and
puncturing the steam drum. While most of the crew went over the
side to keep from being scalded, Shaivneen's captain ordered her colors
struck to save the lives of the injured still aboard. Ceasing fire, the rebel
colonel in command sent out a boat to remove survivors and blow the
vessel up; "which was effectively done," he reported, "consigning all to
the wind and waves."
Such was the bad news — bad for Butler because it meant that the
navy, having lost two ships in as many days, was likely to be reluctant
to give him the slam-bang close support he would want when he moved
against or beyond the high-sited batteries on Chafrin's and Drewry's
bluffs, fortified works flanking the last tortuous upstream bend of the
river below Richmond, both of them integral parts of the hard-shell
outer defenses he would have to pierce if he was to put the hug on the
rebel capital. The good news came from his cavalry, two brigades com-
bined in a 3000-man division under Brigadier General August Kautz,
a thirty-six-year-old German-born West Pointer. Off on his own while
the rest of the army was steaming up the James, Kautz rode due west
out of Suffolk on May 5 for a strike at the Petersburg & Weldon Rail-
road, damage to which would go far toward delaying the arrival of
enemy reinforcements from the Carolinas. Encountering little opposi-
tion he did his work in a slashing style: first at Stony Creek on May 7,
where he burned the hundred-foot railway bridge twenty miles south
of Petersburg, and then next day at the Nottoway River, another five
The Forty Days [ 255 ]
miles down the line, where he put the torch to a second bridge,
twice as long, before turning north to rejoin the army two days
later at City Point. Encouraged by news of the first of these two burn-
ings, which reached him on May 8, Butler spent that day in camp, se-
cure behind his Bermuda Neck intrenchments, putting the final touches
to his plans for a movement against Petersburg next morning, much
heavier than the one that had taken him only as far as Port Walthall
Junction the day before.
This time he got a solid half of his infantry in motion, 14,000 in
all. Smith, on the left, again ran into fire as he approached the Junction
and called on Gillmore, who had advanced by then to Chester Station
unopposed, to come down and join the fight. Gillmore did, although
regretfully, having just begun to rip up track and tear down telegraph
wire along the turnpike. But when the two corps began to maneuver
in accordance with a scheme for bagging the force at the Junction, the
graybacks slipped from between them and scuttled south. Pursuing, the
Federals found the Confederate main body dug in behind unfordable
Swift Creek, three miles north of Petersburg, which in turn lay beyond
the unfordable Appomattox. When Butler came up to observe their
fruitless exchange of long-range shots with the enemy on the far side
of the creek, Gillmore and Smith informed him that Petersburg
couldn't be taken from this direction. The thing to do, they said, was
return at once to Bermuda Neck and lay a pontoon bridge across the
Appomattox at Point of Rocks, which would permit an attack on
Petersburg from the east. Fuming at this after-the-fact advice from the
two professionals, Butler replied testily that he had no intention of
building a bridge for West Pointers to retreat across as soon as things
got sticky, and Smith later declared that he found this remark "of such
a character as to check voluntary advice during the remainder of the
campaign."
Tempers got no better overnight. Contemplating the situation
next morning, with the uncrossable creek still before him, Butler de-
cided that Petersburg was of little importance anyhow, now that Kautz
had burned two bridges on the railroad in its rear. Accordingly, he
ordered everyone back to Bermuda Neck, there to regroup for an ad-
vance to be made on Richmond as soon as he got his plans worked out.
They returned the following day, May 1 1, filing in through gaps in the in-
trenchments around noon, and Butler retired to his tent to think things
over for a while.
If he was bitter, so were his lieutenants, contrasting what had been
so boldly projected with what had been so timidly and erratically per-
formed. In Smith's opinion, based on what he had seen in the past six
unprofitable days, the army commander was "as helpless as a child on
the field of battle and as visionary as an opium eater in council." Butler
returned the compliment in kind, including Gillmore in the indict-
[256] THE CIVIL WAR3ST1864
ment. Both generals, he said, "agreed upon but one thing and that was
how they could thwart and interfere with me," while, to make matters
worse, neither of them "really desired that the other should succeed."
Feeling his reputation threatened (in the North, that is; in the South he
was already known as "Beast" Butler, hanger of patriots, insulter of
women) he had written to Stanton two nights ago, from the near bank
of Swift Creek, reviewing his progress to date and placing it in the best
possible light, even though this involved a rather ingenuous reinterpre-
tation of his share in Grant's over-all design for the crushing of Lee and
the taking of Richmond.
"We can hold out against the whole of Lee's army," he informed
the Secretary, and he added for good measure: "General Grant will
not be troubled with any further reinforcements to Lee from Beaure-
gard's force."
Lee of course had no intention of attacking Butler, who was not
even in his department, and though it was true he wanted reinforce-
ments from any source whatever, he certainly expected none from the
general opposing the southside threat, since, at the outset at least, that
unfortunate commander — George Pickett, of Gettysburg fame — had
practically no troops to fight with, let alone detach. He had, in all,
fewer than 750 of all arms to stand in the path of the 30,000 Federals
debarking at Bermuda Hundred and City Point, nine miles respectively
from Drewry's Bluff and his district headquarters at Petersburg, whose
garrisons were included in the total that showed him facing odds of
forty-to-one or longer. Beauregard, sixty-five miles to the south at
Weldon, which he had reached two weeks ago to assume command of
the newly created Department of North Carolina and Southern Virginia,
replied to an urgent summons from Richmond on May 5 that he was
"indisposed," too ill to take the field. Three brigades were en route from
his old command at Charleston; he would do his utmost to speed them
northward, so long at least as the railroad stayed in operation, and
would come up in person as soon as he felt well enough to travel. In
the meantime, though, he left it to Pickett to improvise as best he could
a defense against the host ascending the James.
Pickett himself was not even supposed to be there, having received
orders the day before to proceed by rail to Hanover Junction and there
await the arrival of his four brigades — two of which were now with
Hoke in the movement against New Bern, down the coast, while the
other two were with Aiajor General Robert Ransom, charged with de-
fending Richmond north of the James — for a reunion with Lee's
army, then on its way eastward into the Wilderness to challenge Grant's
advance. The long-haired Virginian looked forward to returning to duty
under Longstreet, whose guidance he had missed these past eight months
on detached service. Warned of the landings downriver today, however,
The Forty Days [ 257 ]
he stayed to meet the threat to the near vacuum between the James and
the Appomattox, although he was to regret profoundly, in the course
of the next five days, that he had not caught an earlier northbound
train. Those five days, May 5-10, were an unrelenting nightmare,
illuminated from time to time by flashes of incredible luck which then
were seen to have served perversely, not to resolve, but rather to pro-
long the strain on his jangled nerves. Fortunately, two regiments from
the first of the three promised brigades from Charleston reached Peters-
burg on the morning of May 6, and Pickett got these 600 Carolinians up
the turnpike in time to delay the advance of the brigade Butler sent prob-
ing for the railroad. They managed this, though only by the hardest, and
just as they were about to be overrun they were reinforced by a
brigade sent down from Richmond: Tennesseans who had arrived that
morning under Brigadier General Bushrod Johnson, the first of two
western outfits summoned east to replace Pickett's two brigades in the
capital defenses. Johnson was a heavy hitter, as he had shown by spear-
heading the Chickamauga breakthrough, and his attack drove the re-
connoitering Federals back on the line of intrenchments constructed
that day across Bermuda Neck. Pickett told Johnson to dig in along the
pike, and then — reinforced by the rest of the Charleston brigade, which
came up after midnight to lift his strength to about 3000 — settled down
to wait, as best his tormented nerves would permit, for what tomorrow
was going to bring.
What tomorrow brought was Butler's four-brigade attack, 6000
strong, and news that Kautz had burned the bridge over Stony Creek,
cutting off hope for the early arrival of more troops from the south.
One reinforcement Pickett did receive, however, and this was Major
General D. H. Hill, famed for a ferocity in battle rivaling that of his
late brother-in-law Stonewall Jackson. His caustic tongue having cost
him lofty posts in both of the Confederacy's main armies — together
with a promotion to lieutenant general, withdrawn when he fell out
with Bragg after Chickamauga — Hill had offered his services to Beaure-
gard as an aide-de-camp, and Beauregard sent him at once to Petersburg
to see if Pickett thought he could be of any help. Pickett did indeed
think so, and put the rank-waiving North Carolinian in charge of the
two brigades in position up the turnpike. Hill handled them so skillfully
in the action today around Port Walthall Junction, losing 184 to inflict
289 casualties on a force twice the size of his own, that Butler pulled
back, more or less baffled, and spent what was left of that day and all
of the next, May 8, brooding behind his Bermuda Neck intrenchments.
Greatly relieved by this turn of events, Pickett experienced a
mixed reaction to news that Hoke's projected attack on New Bern
had been a failure, due to the nonarrival of the Albemarle, which had
retired up the Roanoke River on May 5 after a three-hour fight with
seven Union gunboats in the Sound from which the ironclad took her
[258] THE CIVIL WAR3T1864
name. She had inflicted severe damage on her challengers and suffered
little herself, except to her riddled stack, but the engagement had proved
her so unwieldy that her skipper decided there was no hope of steaming
down into Pamlico Sound to repeat at New Bern the victory she had
helped to win two weeks ago at Plymouth. This meant that, without
the support of the ram, Hoke's scheduled attack had to be called off:
which in turn freed him and his five brigades, including the two from
Pickett, for use elsewhere. Nowhere were they needed worse than at
Petersburg, and Pickett was pleased to learn that they were to join him
there by rail from Goldsboro — though when they would arrive was
even more doubtful now than it had been the day before, word having
just come in that Kautz had burned a second railway bridge, this one
across the Nottoway, twice the length of the first and therefore likely
to require about twice the time to replace.
Offsetting this last, there was good news from above. While Hill
was making his fight for the Junction, the second western brigade
reached Richmond — Alabamians under Brigadier General Archibald
Gracie, another Chickamauga hero — and was sent across the James by
Ransom, who not only followed in person but also brought along
Pickett's other pair of brigades and posted all three in the works around
Drewry's Bluff, bracing them for a stand in case the Federals turned in
that direction. This addition of 4500 troops, combined with Pickett's
remnant and the two brigades with Hill, increased the strength of the
southside force to about 8000, roughly one third the number Butler
had on Bermuda Neck. Pickett was greatly encouraged by this reduction
of the odds — and so, apparently, was Beauregard, who wired from
Weldon on May 8: "The water has improved my health." Whether
the cause was the water or the buildup (not to mention the strangely
hesitant performance by Pickett's opponent, who seemed to be groping
his way piecemeal toward eventual destruction) the Louisiana general
announced that he soon would be well enough to come to Petersburg
and lift the awesome burden of responsibility from the district com-
mander's shoulders.
By then Butler had ended his spell of brooding, and next morning
he came on again, this time with half his army, only to pull up short
on the north bank of Swift Creek, whose presence he seemed not to have
suspected until now. Beauregard arrived the following day, May 10, in
time to watch the baffled Army of the James — so Butler styled it —
fade back once more from approximate contact and set out rearward to
find sanctuary within its fortifications. Coming fast behind him on the
railroad were seven veteran brigades of infantry, Hoke's five from
Goldsboro and two more from Charleston. All reached Petersburg by
nightfall, having marched across the five-mile gap between the Notto-
way and Stony Creek, where they got aboard waiting cars for the last
twenty miles of their ride. Pickett's five days were up at last, and
The Forty Days [ 259 ]
rather as if the strain had been what kept him rigid, after all, he
collapsed and took to his bed with a nervous exhaustion vaguely diag-
nosed as "fever." To replace him, Beauregard summoned Major General
W. H. C. Whiting from Wilmington, and turned at once to the task
of organizing the twelve brigades now south of the James into four
divisions. Their combined strength was just under 20,000: enough, he
thought, to deal with Ben Butler for once and for all by going over to
the offensive, provided of course that the Beast could be lured from
behind his intrenchments and out from between the two rivers pro-
tecting his flanks.
Butler complied, two days later, by moving northward against
the works around Drewry's Bluff, apparently having decided to go for
Richmond after all. Beauregard had anticipated this by sending Hoke
with seven brigades to join Ransom, and now he prepared to follow and
take command in person, leaving Whiting to hold Petersburg with
the other two brigades of infantry, plus one of cavalry just come up
from North Carolina. Arriving at 3 a.m. May 14, after taking a round-
about route to avoid capture, he found that the Federals had driven
the defenders from some of the outworks, south and west of Drewry's,
and now were consolidating their gains, obviously in preparation for
an all-out assault that would open the way to Richmond. The high-
spirited Creole, with his big sad bloodhound eyes and his hair brushed
forward in lovelocks over his temples, did not quail before this menace;
he welcomed it as a chance to catch Butler off balance and drop him
with a counterpunch.
Though it came at a rather awkward time, Ransom having de-
tached two brigades two days ago to help fend off Sheridan, whose
troopers had broken through the outer defenses north of the capital,
Beauregard had a plan involving Grand Strategy which he hoped would
provide him with all the soldiers needed to dispose of the threat to
Richmond, not only from the south, but from the north as well: not
only of Butler, that is, but also of Grant. For three years now the Hero
of Sumter had specialized in providing on short notice various blue-
prints for total victory, simple in concept, large in scale, and character-
ized by daring. This one was no exception. In essence, the plan was for
Lee to fall back on the capital, avoiding all but rear-guard actions in
the process, then send Beauregard 10,000 of his veterans, together with
Ransom's two detached brigades, as reinforcements to be used in
cutting Butler off from his base and accomplishing his destruction; after
which, Old Bory subsequently explained, "I would then move to attack
Grant on his left flank and rear, while Lee attacked him in front." He
added that he not only "felt sure of defeating Grant," but was convinced
that such a stroke would "probably open the way to Washington, where
we might dictate Peace! /"
Thus Beauregard — at 3 o'clock in the morning. Wasting no time
[260] THE CIVIL WAR»"1864
by putting the plan on paper, he outlined it verbally for a colonel on
his staff and sent him at once to Richmond with instructions to pass
it on without delay to the Commander in Chief. Davis was unavailable
at that hour, but Bragg was not. Having heard the proposal, he dressed
and rode to Drewry's for a conference with its author. Old Bory was
waiting, and launched into a fervent plea for action. "Bragg," he said,
"circumstances have thrown the fate of the Confederacy in your hands
and mine. Let us play our parts boldly and fearlessly. Issue those orders
and I'll carry them out to the best of my ability. I'll guarantee success!"
Though noncommittal, the grim-faced military adviser listened to
further details of the plan and returned to the capital, having promised
to lay the facts before the President as soon as possible. This he did:
along with his objections, which were stringent.
Not only did the scheme ignore the loss of the Shenandoah Valley
and the Virginia Central Railroad, he declared, but "the retreat of
General Lee, a distance of sixty miles, from the immediate front of a
superior force with no less than 8000 of the enemy's cavalry between
him and the Chickahominy ... at least endangered the safety of his army
if it did not involve its destruction." Moreover, he said, such a concen-
tration of troops beyond the James was quite unnecessary; Beauregard
already had a force "ample for the purpose of crushing that under Butler,
if promptly and vigorously used." Davis agreed that the plan was
neither practical not requisite, and in courtesy to the Louisiana general,
as well as out of concern for his touchy pride, he rode to Drewry's
BlufF to tell him so in person, in the gentlest possible terms.
Beauregard's spirits drooped; but only momentarily. They re-
bounded at the President's assurance that Ransom's two brigades, having
wound up their pursuit of Sheridan, would be ordered back across the
James for a share in the attack, and Old Bory, savoring the prospect of
belaboring the Beast who had tyrannized New Orleans, set to work de-
vising a plan for assailing him, first frontally, to put him in a state of
shock, and then on the flanks and rear, so that, being "thus environed
by three walls of fire, [Butler] could have no resource against substan-
tial capture or destruction, except in an attempt at partial and hazardous
escape westward, away from his base, trains, or supplies." To accom-
plish this consummation, his first intention was to assemble all twelve
infantry brigades at Drewry's for the assault, but then he decided that,
instead of waiting for the troops to arrive from Petersburg by a round-
about march to avoid the Federals on the turnpike, he would have
Whiting move up to Port Walthall Junction and pitch into their rear
when he heard the guns announce the opening of the attack on their
front by the other ten brigades, four each under Hoke and Ransom and
two in a reserve division under Brigadier General Alfred Colquitt, who
commanded one of the three brigades from Charleston. Notifying
The Forty Days [ 261 ]
Whiting by messenger and the other three division chiefs in person, he
set dawn of May 16 as the jump-off hour.
That gave them a full day to get ready, if Butler would only
cooperate by remaining where he was. He did just that, though more
from ineptness than by design; an attack planned for that day had to
be called off when it turned out that he had provided so well for the
defense of his newly won position that there were no troops left for
the offensive. Butler was not greatly disturbed by this development,
apparently having become inured to the fact that fumbling brought de-
lay. For one thing, he had done well these past three days — especially
by contrast with the preceding seven — and had encountered only
token opposition in occupying the outworks around Drewry's. So had
his cavalry, which he unleashed again when he left Bermuda Neck;
Kautz had struck the Richmond & Danville two days ago, wrecking
switches and culverts, and by now was astride the Southside line, tear-
ing up sections of track. Back on the James, moreover, though the river
was too shallow for the ironclads to proceed beyond City Point, the
navy had been persuaded to lend a hand by pushing a few lighter-draft
gunboats up to Chaffin's for a duel with the batteries on that bluff. All
this should give the rebels plenty to fret about for the next day or two,
Butler reasoned; by which time he would be ready to hit them in
earnest.
His two corps commanders, while considering themselves honor-
barred from tendering any more "voluntary advice," were by no means
as confident that the Confederates would be willing to abide a waiting
game. Smith, in fact — called "Baldy" from his cadet days when his
hair began to thin, though he protested unavailingly nowadays that he
still had more of it than did many who addressed him by this unwanted
sobriquet — was so disturbed by what he took to be signs of a pending
assault on his position that he spent a good part of May 15, a Sunday,
scavenging rebel telegraph wire along the turnpike and stringing it from
stumps and bushes across his front, low to the ground to trip the un-
wary; "a devilish contrivance none but a Yankee could devise," Rich-
mond papers were presently to say of this innovation which Burnside
had found useful in his defense of Knoxville six months before. Smith
hoped it would serve as well here on Butler's right, though he ran out of
wire before he reached his flank brigade, nearest the James. He and
Gillmore each had two divisions on line; his third was still at City Point,
completely out of things, and one of Gillmore's was posted in reserve,
back down the pike. The night was dark, soggy with intermittent rain
and a heavy fog that seemed to thicken with Monday's dawn, providing
a curtain through which — true to Baldy's uncommunicated predic-
tion — the graybacks came screaming and shooting and, as it turned out,
[262] THE CIVIL WAR^" 1864
tripping over the low-strung wire across much of the Federal right front,
where the blow first fell.
Along those hampered portions of the line, Smith was to say, the
attackers were "slaughtered like partridges." But unfortunately, as the
next phase of the fight would show, there was no wire in front of
Gillmore's two divisions on the left; nor was there any in front of the
brigade on the far right, where Beauregard was intent on unhinging the
Union line, severing its connection with the river, and setting it up for
the envelopment designed, as he said, "to separate Butler from his base
and capture his whole army, if possible." Struck and scattered, the flank
brigade lost fivt stands of colors and more than 400 prisoners, including
its commander, and though the adjoining brigades and Smith's other
division stood fast behind their wire, inflicting heavy casualties on
Ransom, Gillmore's divisions gave ground rapidly before an advance
by Hoke, also losing one of their brigade commanders, along with a
good many lesser captives and Rve guns. Confusion followed on both
sides, due to the fog and the disjointed condition of the lines. Beaure-
gard threw Colquitt in to plug the gap that developed between Hoke
and Ransom, and Gillmore got his reserve division up in time to stiffen
the resistance his troops were able to offer after falling back. By 10
o'clock, after five hours of fighting, the battle had reached the pendu-
lous climax Old Bory intended for Whiting to resolve when he came up
in the Union rear, as scheduled, to administer with his two brigades the
rap that would shatter the blue mass into westward-fleeing fragments,
ready to be gathered up by the brigade of saber-swinging troopers he
was bringing with him, up the railroad from the Junction. Two hours
ago, a lull in the fighting had allowed the sound of firing to come
through from the south. It grew, then died away, which was taken
to mean that Whiting had met with slight resistance and would soon be
up. Since then, nothing had been heard from him, though Beauregard
sent out couriers to find him somewhere down the pike, all bearing the
same message: "Press on and press over everything in your front, and the
day will be complete."
None of the couriers found him, for the simple yet scarcely
credible reason that he was not there to be found. Not only was he not
advancing, as ordered, from Port Walthall Junction; he had fallen back
in a state of near collapse at the first threat of opposition, despite the
protests of subordinates and Harvey Hill, who had reverted to his role
of volunteer aide. A brilliant engineer, whose talent had made Wilming-
ton's Fort Fisher the Confederacy's stoutest bastion and who had at-
tained at West Point the highest scholastic average any cadet had ever
scored, the forty-year-old Mississippian was cursed with an imagination
that conjured up lurid pictures of all the bloody consequences incaution
might bring on. Intelligence could be a liability when it took this form
in a military man, and Chase Whiting was a case in point for the
The Forty Days [ 263 ]
argument that a touch of stolidity, even stupidity, might be a useful
component in the makeup of a field commander. In any event,
wrought-up as he was from the strain of the past two lonely days at
Petersburg, which he was convinced was about to be attacked by the
superior blue force at City Point, he went into something resembling
a trance when he encountered sporadic resistance on the turnpike be-
yond Swift Creek, and ordered a precipitate return to the south bank.
Dismayed, the two brigade chiefs had no choice except to obey, and
Hill, though he retired from Whiting's presence in disgust, later de-
fended him from rumors that he had been drunk or under the influence
of narcotics. Whiting himself had a simpler explanation, which he gave
after the return to Petersburg that evening. Berated by the two
brigadiers, who could not restrain their anger at having been denied a
share in the battle today, he turned the command over to Hill, "deem-
ing that harmony of action was to be preferred to any personal considera-
tion, and feeling at the time — as, indeed, I had felt for twenty-four
hours — physically unfit for action."
Up at Drewry's, the truth as to what was happening below lay
well outside the realm of speculation. Expecting Whiting to appear at
any moment on the far side of the field, Beauregard abstained from
attempting a costly frontal assault, which might or might not be suc-
cessful, to accomplish what he believed could be done at next to no
cost by pressure from the rear. Jefferson Davis, who could seldom re-
sist attending a battle whose guns were roaring within earshot, rode
down from Richmond to share in the mystery and the waiting. "Ah, at
last!" he said with a smile, shortly before 2 o'clock, when a burst of
firing was heard from the direction of Whiting's supposed advance.
It died away and did not recur, however, and Beauregard regretfully
concluded that it had been produced by a cavalry skirmish, not by an
infantry attack. After another two hours of fruitless waiting and in-
creased resistance, the Creole general would report, "I reluctantly
abandoned so much of my plan as contemplated more than a vigorous
pursuit of Butler and driving him to his fortified base. ... I therefore
put the army in position for the night, and sent instructions to Whiting
to join our right at the railroad in the morning."
As it turned out, no "driving" was needed; Butler drove himself.
Badly confused by the events of the day — he had lost 4160 killed,
wounded, or missing, including two brigade commanders and 1386
other prisoners, as compared to Beauregard's total of 2506 in those three
categories — he ordered a nighttime withdrawal to Bermuda Neck.
"The troops having been on incessant duty for five days, three of which
were in a rainstorm," he informed Washington, quite as if no battle had
been fought, "I retired at leisure to within my own lines." Once back
there, within the sheltering arms of the two rivers, he busied himself
with strengthening his three-mile line of intrenchments, followed by
[264] THE CIVIL WAR^* 1864
the victorious Confederates, who came up next morning and began
digging a three-mile line of their own, studded with guns confronting
those in the Union works. Thus, after two weeks of fitful confusion,
in the course of which the Federals suffered just under 6000 casualties
to inflict about half as many, a stalemate was achieved; Beauregard could
not get onto Bermuda Neck, but neither could Butler get off it. The
Beast was caged.
Richmonders exulted in the thought of cock-eyed Butler snarling
behind bars, but Grant employed a different simile to describe the out-
come of his well-laid plan for obliging Lee to fall back, in haste and
probable disarray, to protect the threatened capital in his rear. Angered
by the news from Bermuda Hundred, which reached him hard on the
heels of equally woeful accounts of what had happened to Banks and
Sigel, up the Red and at New Market, he borrowed a phrase from a staff
engineer whom he sent to look into the tactical situation beyond the
James. Butler's army, he presently reported, "was as completely shut
off from further operations directly against Richmond as if it had been
in a bottle strongly corked/'
As for Beauregard the corker, though he was proud of his victory
and its outcome, he was by no means content. "We could and should
have done more," he said. "We could and should have captured Butler's
entire army." Believing that this could still be done, he returned to his
former proposal that he and Lee collaborate in disposing of the enemies
before them, except that this time he reversed the order of their destruc-
tion. "The crisis demands prompt and decisive action," he notified
Bragg on the night of May 1 8, outlining a plan whereby he would de-
tach 15,000 troops for a flank attack on Grant while Lee pulled back
to the Chickahominy. Once Grant was whipped, then Lee would re-
inforce Beauregard for attending to Butler in much the same fashion.
Admittedly the odds were long, but Old Bory considered the prize well
worth the gamble, especially by contrast with what was likely to result
from not trying at all. "Without such concentration," he declared,
"nothing decisive can be effected, and the picture presented is one of
ultimate starvation."
Davis agreed that the future seemed bleak, but he could not see
that Beauregard's plan, which reached his desk the following morning,
was one that would make it rosy. All the previous objections still ob-
tained, particularly the danger to Lee in falling back before a superior
blue army reported to be receiving heavy reinforcements almost daily,
while he himself got none, and it was to this problem that Davis gave
his attention in returning the rejected plan to Bragg. "If 15,000 men
can be spared for the flank movement," he noted, "certainly 10,000 may
be sent to reinforce General Lee." This was not at all what Old Bory
had had in mind, since it denied him anything more than a subservient
role in Richmond's further deliverance from peril. He protested for
The Forty Days [ 265 ]
all he was worth, and not entirely without success. Not 10,000, but
6000 were ordered detached that day, May 20, from the force that
manned the intrenchments confronting and corking the bluecoats on
Bermuda Neck. Pickett's four brigades, plus one of the three sent up
from Charleston in the course of the past week — all five had been
scheduled to do so anyhow, before Butler's appearance up the James —
left next day to join or rejoin the Army of Northern Virginia.
X 4 X
Lee never liked the notion of abandoning any part of the Old Dominion
to its foes, but in this case, setting out from Spotsylvania on May 2 1 to
intercept another crablike Union sidle around his right, he not only
was moving toward 8500 reinforcements, he also believed he was about
to avail himself of his best chance, so far, to "end this business on the
battlefield, not in a fortified place." With the two armies in motion, on
more or less parallel routes, almost anything could happen, and he was
exhilarated, as always, by the prospect. Best of all, though, he looked
forward to the confrontation likely to follow on the line of the North
Anna, a couple of miles this side of Hanover Junction, where the troops
from Breckinridge and Beauregard had been told to join him in time
to strengthen the attack he hoped to launch while Grant was astride
the deep-banked river. Moreover, with his army holding the inside
track, there was little of the strain there had been two weeks ago in the
breakneck race for Spotsylvania; Ewell, whose corps had been with-
drawn across the Po at dawn, had barely 25 miles to go on the main-
traveled Telegraph Road, while Hancock, whose starting point was
the north bank of the Ni, had 34 roundabout miles to cover, by inferior
roads and without the customary mass of rapid-firing blue troopers to
clear and screen his front. This meant that Lee could avoid exhausting
his men on the march and still have plenty of time, at its end, for pre-
paring the ground on which he would stand to deliver the blow he had
in mind.
Ewell set off down the Telegraph Road at noon, Anderson four
hours later. While Lee waited beside the Po, preparing to follow, A. P.
Hill reported himself fit for duty. Despite his pallor, which seemed to
deny his claim of recovery, Lee at once restored him to command, with
instructions to hold his corps in position till well after nightfall unless
the last of the departing Federals pulled out before that time, and sent
Early ahead to resume charge of his division under Ewell. He himself
left at 8 o'clock that evening. "Come, gentlemen," he told his staff", and
turned Traveller's head southward in the twilight.
Two thirds of the way to Hanover Junction, having ridden past
Anderson's marchers under the flooding light of a full moon, he took
266
THE CIVIL WAR ^ i 8 64
a two-hour rest beside Polecat Creek — which contributed its waters, but
fortunately not its name, to the Mattaponi — and reached the North Anna
soon after 8 o'clock next morning, about the same time the head of
Ewell's column passed over and began filing into position along the
south bank, covering Chesterfield Bridge, by which it had crossed, and
the railroad span half a mile below, both of which were also protected
by bridgeheads set up on the other side. When Anderson arrived at
noon, his two divisions extended the line a mile and a half upstream to
Ox Ford, the only point along this stretch of river where the right bank
was higher than the left. Army headquarters was established in the
southwest quadrant of the crossing of the Virginia Central and the
Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac; Grant was reported to be march-
ing down the latter. Breckinridge was waiting at Hanover Junction
with his two brigades, as ordered, and was given a position in line be-
tween Anderson and Ewell. Pickett's division was also there (but not
its ringleted commander, who was still convalescing from the strain he
had been under, south of the James); Lee assigned it temporarily to
Hill, who would arrive tomorrow to extend the line a couple of miles
beyond Ox Ford, in case the bluecoats tried a flanking movement from
that direction when they came up. For the present, Lee required no
digging to be done, partly because he did not know for sure that Grant
would attempt a crossing here when he found the graybacks once more
in his path, intrenched or not, and also because he wanted to give his
soldiers the leisure to enjoy their
first full day out of contact with
the enemy since the meeting en-
gagement in the Wilderness,
seventeen bloody days ago.
Hill arrived the following
morning, May 23, coming in
from the west shortly before the
midday appearance of the Fed-
erals from the north. His ap-
proach was by the Virginia Cen-
tral, since he had crossed the
North Anna near Beaver Dam
by a longer westerly route to
guard the wagon train, and Lee
had him rest his three divisions,
with Pickett's as a fourth, under
cover of some woods around
Anderson Station, three miles
short of Hanover Junction.
While the last of his men were
[Richmond
20 miles)
The Forty Days [ 267 ]
filing in to drop their packs in the shade of the trees, the first enemy col-
umns came into sight beyond the river, heavy blue streams flowing slug-
gishly down the Telegraph Road and the tracks of the R.F.&P. Greeted
by guns emplaced on high ground overlooking Ox Ford, they paused,
then resumed their flow as the Union batteries took up the challenge.
Short of the ford and the two bridgeheads, they stopped again and en-
gaged the outpost rebels in the kind of long-range firefight known to
veterans as a "squabble." Lee was watching with suppressed excitement,
foreseeing his chance at another Fredericksburg if Grant would only
continue to do as he so much hoped he would, when news arrived from
the far left that another Union column was about to force a crossing
beyond Jericho Mills, three or four miles above. Hill was available to
counter such an upstream threat, but Lee decided to look into it in per-
son before disturbing Little Powell's road-worn troops. Still weary from
his all-night ride two nights ago, and feeling the first twinges of an
intestinal disorder, he went in a borrowed carriage to the point that
was said to be menaced and studied carefully with his binoculars some
bluecoats in a skirt of woods across the river. He took his time, then
turned at last to a courier he had brought along. "Go back and tell
A. P. Hill to leave his men in camp," he said. "This is nothing but a
feint. The enemy is preparing to cross below."
He was both right and wrong in this assessment: right in a lesser,
wrong in a larger sense: as he discovered when he got back to head-
quarters, late that afternoon, and heard the uproar of a sizeable engage-
ment on the far left, in the upstream region he had just returned from.
Warren had his whole corps there and by 4.30 had completed a crossing
of the river, not at the point where Lee had reconnoitered, but at nearby
Jericho Mills — which was in fact "below," as Lee had predicted, but a
good deal less so than he apparently had expected. Learning that the
Federals had crossed and were advancing southward through the woods
in unknown strength, Hill sent Wilcox up to meet them and Heth to
follow in support if needed. The action opened brisklv, on a promising
note. Wilcox, by the luck of the draw, struck Wadsworth's depleted
division, now under Brigadier General Lysander Cutler, and drove it
back in panic on the other two divisions. At this point, however, things
began to go badly for the attackers, who seemed to have forgotten, in
the course of more than two weeks of defensive combat, how to func-
tion on the offensive. Confused by their quick success, they fought
disjointedly when they moved forward to complete the Union rout.
Struck in turn, they backpedaled and fell into confusion, glad to make
their escape under cover of the woods and a furious rainstorm that broke
over them at sundown to end the fighting before Heth arrived to join it.
They had lost 642 men in the engagement, veterans who would be
sorely missed in battles still to come, and had gained nothing more than
[z68] THE CIVIL WAR 5r 1864
the infliction of an equal number of casualties on an enemy who could
far better afford the loss.
In any case, here was the first definite indication that Grant in-
tended to attack Lee where he was, rather than continue his march
downriver in search of an uncontested crossing, and presently there
was another such indication, quite as definite, near the opposite end of
the line. Under cover of the rainstorm that ended the Jericho Mills
affair at sunset, Hancock launched a sudden two-brigade assault on the
Chesterfield bridgehead, which was taken so quickly that the defenders
not only had no time to fire the wooden structure in their rear, but
also lost more than a hundred of their number killed or captured before
they could scramble back across.
This was a small price to pay for the disclosure that the Federals
were preparing to attack both Confederate wings tomorrow, above and
below Ox Ford. On the off chance that it might be a ruse, employed
by Grant to screen another sidle, Lee alerted Anderson to be ready for
a downstream march next morning. At the same time, though — before
turning in for such badly needed sleep as his cramped bowels would
permit — he began devising a trap, the design for which was based on
personal reconnaissance of the ground and careful study of the map,
for Grant's reception if that general acted on the larger probability
that he would hold to the plan whose beginnings had just been disclosed,
upstream and down, for a widespread double attack on the gray army
fanned out along the south bank of the river to his front.
That was just what the northern commander had in mind, and his
confidence that he could bring it off, following up the double attack
with a double envelopment, was shared by all around and under him,
from major generals down to drummer boys and teamsters. Leaving
Spotsylvania on May 21, however, after sixteen unrelenting, unavailing
days of combat (waged at an average cost of 2300 casualties a day, as
compared to Lee's 1100) the blue marchers had been discouraged by
this second tacit admission that, despite their advantage in numbers and
equipment and supplies, whenever the tactical situation was reduced
to a direct confrontation, face to face, it was they and not their ragged,
underfed adversaries who broke off the contest and shifted ground for
another try, with the same disheartening result.
"Now what is the reason that we cannot walk straight through
them with our far superior numbers?" a Michigan soldier asked, and
after ruling out individual skill as a factor in the equation — "We fight
as good as they" — came up with two possible answers: "They must
understand the country better, or there is a screw loose somewhere in
the machinery of our army."
Presently though, moving southeast, then south, and then south-
southwest through a region so far untouched by war, with well-tended
The Forty Days [ 269 ]
crops along the road and plenty of fence rails available for campfires
at the end of each day's march, they perceived once more that the shift
was not only sideways but forward. It was Lee, not Grant, who was
yielding ground, and sooner or later — sooner, at this rate, for the
march to the North Anna was better than twice the length of the one
two weeks ago, out of the Wilderness — the southern commander would
have none left to yield. Then would come the showdown, the last
battle: which, after all, was the only one that counted in the long run,
the only one they really had to win to win the war. And steadily, as this
conviction grew, so did their confidence in themselves and the man who
led them. A A4assachusetts regiment, having crossed the Mattaponi on
the morning of May 23, was slogging down the railroad, past a siding,
and saw Grant, in his now tarnished uniform, perched on a flatcar
gnawing a ham bone. When the New Englanders gave him a cheer he
responded with a casual wave of the bone, which he then went back to.
They liked that in him. It seemed to them that this singleness of purpose,
this refusal to be distracted, was as characteristic of his way of fighting
as it was of his way of eating. He was giving Lee the kind of attention
he gave the ham bone, and it seemed to them that the result might be
the same, just ahead on the North Anna — or if not there, then some-
where else this side of Richmond, where Lee would finally run out of
space for backing up.
Grant believed the showdown would come here; anyhow he acted
on that premise when he came within sight of the river around midday.
Warren having taken the lead by turning south at Guiney Station,
eight miles short of Milford, he sent him upstream to Jericho Mills and
kept Hancock, who followed close behind, marching straight ahead to
confront the rebels defending Chesterfield Bridge and the railroad span
below. He had hoped that Lee would venture after him for an all-out
scrap in the open country south and east of the A4attaponi, but since the
old fox had declined the challenge there was nothing for Grant to do, as
he saw it, but go for Lee where he now was. As for turning back, he
had just finished making this practically impossible by closing down
his Belle Plain base on the Potomac, severing all connection with that
river except by sea, and opening another at nearby Port Royal on the
Rappahannock. If Lee eluded him here on the North Anna he was pre-
pared to leapfrog his base southward again when he took up the pur-
suit, thus keeping his supply line short and easily defended. But he did
not intend to be eluded; he intended to fix the rebel army where it was
by striking both of its flanks at once and moving around them to gain
its rear; in which case, disadvantaged though the defenders would be,
as to position as well as numbers, Lee would have no choice except to
fight the showdown battle his adversary was seeking.
Soon after sunset Grant was pleased to learn that all was going
well upstream and down. Warren, having crossed unmolested at
[ 2 7 o ] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
Jericho Mills, had repulsed a savage attempt by A. P. Hill to drive him
back across the river. He was intrenching now, as a precaution, and
would press on south and east tomorrow, to strike and turn the rebel
left. Hancock too was ready for full offensive action, having seized the
approaches to Chesterfield Bridge by driving off or capturing the hun-
dred or so graybacks attempting to hold it. He would cross at first light,
under instructions to serve the enemy right in much the same fashion.
Burnside and Wright would be up by then, and they too would have a
share in the attack, Burnside by crossing at Ox Ford to exert pressure
against the center, thereby helping to fix the defenders in position, and
Wright by crossing in Warren's wake to extend his right and make
certain that rebel flank was overlapped and overwhelmed.
Such were the orders, and Grant turned in for a good night's
sleep, with high hopes for tomorrow. These were encouraged, first thing
next morning, May 24, by reports from the left and right. Hancock
crossed dry-shod, unopposed, as did Wright upstream at Jericho Mills,
following Warren, who encountered only token opposition when he
proceeded southeast down the Virginia Central Railroad and the south
bank of the river. While Burnside moved into position for a lunge across
Ox Ford, good news came from Sheridan that he would be rejoining
today, winding up his fifteen-day excursion down to Richmond and
the James; Grant was pleased to have him back, along with his 11,000-
odd troopers, presumably to undertake the welcome task of gathering
up Lee's fugitives at the climax of the movement now in progress.
Meantime, awaiting developments across the way, the general-in-chief
attended to certain administrative and strategic details, the first of which
was the incorporation of the IX Corps into the Army of the Potomac,
thus ending the arrangement whereby Burnside, out of deference to
his rank, had been kept awkwardly independent of Meade so far in the
campaign.
Two other matters he also attended to in the course of the day,
both having to do with rectifying, as best he could, the recent setbacks
his diversionary efforts had suffered out in the Shenandoah Valley and
down on Bermuda Neck. Sigel's successor, Major General David
Hunter, was given specific instructions to accomplish all that Sigel had
failed to do, and more; that is, to march up the Valley to Staunton, pro-
ceed across the Blue Ridge to Charlottesville, and continue from there
southwest to Lynchburg, living off the country all the way. As for
Butler, though there was no serious thought of removing him from
command despite his ineptness, Grant now viewed his bottled army as
a reservoir from which idle soldiers could be drawn for active service
with the army still in motion under Meade. Accordingly, he was
ordered to load a solid half of his infantry aboard transports — under
Baldy Smith, whom Grant admired — for immediate shipment, down
the James and up the York, to the Army of the Potomac. These 15,000
The Forty Days [271]
added reinforcements might or might not be useful, depending on what
came of the maneuver now in progress across the North Anna.
Reports from there were beginning to be mixed and somewhat
puzzling, not so much because of what was happening, but rather be-
cause of so much that was not. First off, finding Ox Ford covered by
massed batteries frowning down from the high ground just across the
way, Burnside felt obliged to state that any attempt to force a crossing
at that point would result in nothing better than a bloodying of the
water. Grant saw for himself that this was all too true, and accordingly
changed the ruff-whiskered general's orders to avoid a profitless repulse.
Leaving one division to keep up a demonstration against the ford, which
in fact would serve his purpose about as well, Burnside was told to
send his other two divisions — his fourth was still detached, guarding
supply trains — upstream and down, to strengthen the attacks on the
rebel left and right. But there was where the puzzlement came in. Nei-
ther Hancock nor Warren, who by now had been joined by Wright,
had met with even a fraction of the resistance they had expected
to encounter in the course of their advance. Enemy pickets did
little more than fire and fall back at the slightest pressure, they reported.
Except for the presence of these few graybacks, together with those in
plain view on the high ground opposite Ox Ford, Lee's army might
have vanished into quicksand. They found this strange, and proceeded
with caution, scarcely knowing what to expect.
All Grant could do, under the circumstances, was approve the
caution and advise a continuation of the advance, southeast from the
right and southwest from the left. Sooner or later, he felt certain, Han-
cock and Warren would come upon the rebels lurking somewhere be-
tween them, over there, and grind them up as if between two millstones.
Lee rose early, despite a difficult night, and rode again in the
borrowed carriage to visit A. P. Hill near Anderson Station. There he
learned the details of yesterday's botched attack on Warren, made
piecemeal by a single gray division, when a concerted blow by all the
available four would have taken full advantage of the original blue
confusion to wreck a solid quarter of Grant's army. Contrasting what
might have been with what now was — Warren smashed, with Warren
advancing southeast through the woods — Lee turned on Little Powell.
"Why did you not do as Jackson would have done," he fumed: "thrown
your whole force upon those people and driven them back?"
Red-bearded Little Powell had fallen out rather spectacularly, at
one time or another, with every other superior he had ever had, including
Longstreet and the general whose spirit was being invoked; but he held
onto his temper now, rebuked though he was in the presence of his
staff, and accepted from Lee, without protest, what he would never
have taken from any other man. For one thing, he was aware of the
[2 7 2]
THE CIVIL WAR3ST1864
justice of the charge, and for another he could see that Lee was not
himself. Unaccustomed to illness, the gray commander had lost his
balance under pressure of his intestinal complaint, and lashed out at
Little Powell in an attempt to relieve the strain.
None of this was evident, however, when he moved on to the
question of how to deal with the advancing Federals. This had to do
with the preparation of the topographical trap he had devised the night
before; Ewell and Anderson were already at work on their share of it
on the right and in the center, down the railroad east of Hanover
Junction and along the river in the vicinity of Ox Ford.
The North Anna was no more defensible here at close range than
the Rappahannock had been at Fredericksburg, for the same reason that
the opposite bank, being higher, permitted the superior Union batteries
to dominate the position — all, that is, but a brief stretch of the south
bank overlooking Ox Ford and extending about half a mile below. Here
the Confederate batteries had the advantage, and here Lee found the
answer to his problem: not of how to prevent a crossing, which was
practically impossible anywhere else along the line, but of how to deal
with the Federals once they were on his side of the river. He would
hold this stretch of high ground with half of Anderson's corps, strongly
The Forty Days [ 273 ]
supported by artillery, and pull the other half, along with all of
Ewell's, back on a line running southeast to Hanover Junction, just
east of which there was swampy ground to cover this new right flank.
Similarly, Hill would occupy a line extending southwest from Ox Ford
to a convenient northward loop of Little River, just west of Anderson
Station. Intrenched throughout its five-mile length, this inverted V,
its apex to the north and both flanks securely anchored, would provide
compact protection for Lee's army, either wing of which could be rein-
forced at a moment's notice from the other. Best of all, though, it
not only afforded superb facilities for defense; it also gave him an ex-
cellent springboard for attack. By stripping one arm of the V to a
minimum needed for holding off the enemy on that side, he could mass
his troops along the other arm for an attack on that isolated wing of the
blue army: which wing did not matter, since either would have to
cross the river twice in order to reinforce the other, and would there-
fore not be likely to arrive in time to do anything more than share in
the disaster. Here was something for Grant to ponder, when and if he
saw it. But the hope was that he wouldn't see it until it blew up in his
face.
Leaving Hill to get started on the intrenchment of the western
arm, Lee rode back to his headquarters to await developments that
would determine which Union wing he would assault. Ewell and
Anderson, with Breckinridge still between them, were hard at work,
the former having been reinforced by the fifth of the five brigades
sent up from Richmond. So skillful were the men by now at this labor,
which they formerly had despised as unfit for a white man to perform,
that by midday formidable earthworks, complete with slashings and
abatis, had risen where none had been six hours before. This augured
well for the springing of the trap, once the bluecoats came within
snapping distance of its jaws. While Lee waited, however, his intestinal
complaint grew worse, and though he tried to attend to administrative
matters as a distraction, they only served to heighten his irascibility.
The result was fairly predictable. "I have just told the old man he is
not fit to command this army!" a flustered aide protested as he emerged
from the tent where he had been given a dressing-down by Lee.
Before long it was obvious that the charge, though highly ir-
reverent, was true. Even the general himself had to admit it by taking
to his cot, betrayed by his entrails on the verge of the crisis he hoped
to resolve by defeating, with a single well-planned attack, the foe who
had maneuvered him rearward across forty miles of his beloved Virginia
in the past twenty days. If Lee could not deliver the blow, then no one
could. It was too late to send for Beauregard, and none of his three
ranking lieutenants — one-legged Ewell, who was also nearing physical
collapse, or sickly Hill, who had shown only the day before that he
was in no condition for larger duties, or lackluster Anderson, who had
[274] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
been less than three weeks in command of anything more than a division
— seemed capable of exploiting the present opportunity, which would
vanish as soon as the Federals spotted the danger and reacted, either
by intrenching or by pulling back across the river for a crossing
farther down, beyond reach of the trap that had been installed for their
undoing. Time was passing all too fast, and the chance, once gone,
might never recur. Lee on his cot broke out vehemently against this
deprivation of the victory he felt slipping from his grasp.
"We must strike them a blow," he kept saying. "We must never
let them pass us again. We must strike them a blow!"
Betrayed from within, he raged against fate — and rightly; for
before the day was over his worst fears were realized. Hancock, nudg-
ing down from his crossing at Chesterfield Bridge, and Warren and
Wright, skirmishing fitfully all the way from Jericho Mills, came at
last upon what the old gray fox had devised for their destruction.
Not only were the works about as formidable as the ones they had
assaulted with little success at Spotsylvania, but the rebels were still at
work with picks and shovels, adding traverses at critical points to avoid
exposure to enfilade fire. Moreover, the blue generals were not long
in perceiving that such fortifications might have an offensive as well
as a defensive use. They took a good hard look and went into a frenzy
of digging, east and west, throwing up intrenchments of their own
against the attack they believed might come at any moment from either
arm of Lee's inverted V. And while they dug they sent headquarters
word of the situation, best described years later by Evander Law, com-
mander of one of the three Alabama brigades in the works ahead:
"Grant found himself in what may be called a military dilemma. He
had cut his army in two by running it upon the point of a wedge. He
could not break the point, which rested upon the river, and the attempt
to force it out of place by striking on its sides must of necessity be
made without much concert of action between the two wings of his
army, neither of which could reinforce the other without crossing the
river twice; while his opponent could readily transfer his troops, as
needed, from one wing to the other, across the narrow space between
them."
This was no more apparent to Law, then or later, than it presently
was to Grant, who quickly sent down orders canceling the attack. It
was apparent, too, that as soon as a withdrawal could be effected with-
out heavy losses, the thing to do was get back out of there. Meantime,
the digging progressed and dirt continued to fly. Fortunately the
graybacks seemed content with such long-range killing as their snipers
and artillery could manage, but this did little to relieve the feeling on
the Union side that they had once more been outgeneraled. This was
their twentieth day of contact, and the showdown was no closer within
their reach than at the outset. Dejection was taking its toll, along with the
The Forty Days [ 275 ]
profitless wear and tear of the past three weeks. "The men in the ranks
did not look as they did when they entered the Wilderness," one
among them would recall. "Their uniforms were now torn, ragged, and
stained with mud; the men had grown thin and haggard. The experi-
ence of those twenty days seemed to have added twenty years to their
age."
All night they stayed there, and all next day and the following
night, still digging, while Grant pondered the situation. He had never
liked the notion of backing away from any predicament, most of
which he had found would resolve themselves if he held on long enough
for the enemy's troubles, whether he knew what they were or not, to
be enlarged by time and idleness to unbearable proportions; in which
case, he had also found, it was his adversary who got jumpy and pulled
back, leaving the field to him. That was not likely to happen here,
although Lee's headquarters had been shifted three miles down the
R.F.& P. from Hanover Junction, on his doctor's orders to provide a
more restful atmosphere for the still ailing general. Fretful and regret-
ful though he was that his well-laid trap had gone unsprung, Lee looked
now to the future and the chance to devise another that would not fail.
"If I can get one more pull at him," he said of Grant this morning, "I
will defeat him."
But that was not likely to happen here either. On May 26, their
second day of confronting the Confederates with a divided army, the
Federals put on the kind of show that generally preceded a withdrawal
and a shift. There were demonstrations alone the river and both arms
of the fortified V, together with an upstream probe by a full division
of cavalry, as if for a crossing in that direction: a likely course for
Grant to follow, Lee believed, since it would keep him on the direct
route to Richmond and at the same time deprive Lee of the use of the
Virginia Central, his only rail connection with the Shenandoah Valley,
which not only provided most of the food his army ate but was also
his classic route for a counteroffensive designed to frighten the Wash-
ington authorities out of their military wits, as he had done twice already
to bring about the calling-off or the recall of invasions by Hooker and
McClellan, last year and the year before. Though he preferred a down-
stream Union sidle, which he hoped would eventually put Grant in
much the same position as the one that had brought Little Mac to grief
two years ago, astride "the confounded Chickahominy," Lee followed
his usual intelligence procedure of assuming that his adversary would
do what he himself would have done in his place. For that reason, as
well as the evidence of the cavalry demonstration, he thought the shift
would be upstream, for a crossing beyond his left.
He was wrong: as he found out next morning, in plenty of time
to rectify his error with a rapid southward march, still on the chord
of the arc the Federals were traveling. Grant had pulled back under
[276] THE CIVIL WAR3T1864
cover of darkness and set off down — not up — the North Anna, which
combined with the South Anna, five miles southeast of Hanover
Junction, to become the Pamunkey. The Pamunkey in turn combined
with the Mattaponi to become the York, another forty miles below,
but Grant marched only about one third of this distance down the left
bank for a crossing at Hanovertown, which put him within fifteen
miles of Richmond, ten miles closer than he had been on the North
Anna. That was not his only reason for preferring to repeat his
accustomed sidle to the left, around Lee's right; he would also be keep-
ing in close touch with his supply base, leapfrogging it south once
more as he moved in that direction. As for leaving the Virginia Central
in Confederate control, he counted on Hunter to conquer the Valley,
now that Breckinridge had departed, and thereby deny its use to Lee
even as a source of supplies, let alone as a possible avenue of invasion.
Besides, he saw the outcome of this latest confrontation not as a repulse
— which in fact it was, with far-reaching effects, despite its comparative
bloodlessness (he had suffered only 1973 casualties, and Lee less than
half that number) — but rather as conclusive proof that the opposing
army had lost its fabled sting. If the rebels would not fight him there
on the North Anna, with all the advantage they had secured through
Lee's admitted engineering skill, they apparently were in no condition
to fight him anywhere at all. Knowing nothing of Lee's debility, he
assigned its results to the deterioration of the force his adversary com-
manded.
"Lee's army is really whipped," he informed Halleck on the day
he set out down the Pamunkey. "The prisoners we now take show it,
and the action of his army shows it unmistakably. A battle with them
outside of intrenchments cannot be had. Our men feel that they have
gained the morale over the enemy, and attack him with confidence.
I may be mistaken," he summed up, "but I feel that our success over
Lee's army is already assured."
* * *
Grant's march was in two columns, of two corps each, along the
left bank of the Pamunkey; Warren and Burnside crossed at Hanover-
town, Wright and Hancock four miles short of there. Preceded by
Sheridan's troopers, who had little to do on the way down but brush
off prowling scouts, all four corps passed over on pontoon bridges
between noon and midnight, May 28, and though they were delayed
by a rackety seven-hour cavalry fight near Haw's Shop, three miles
beyond the river, by nightfall of the following day the whole army
had pushed south and west to Totopotomoy Creek, which had its be-
ginnings above Atlee, a station on the Virginia Central about midway
between the James and the South Anna, and flowed sluggishly eastward
a dozen miles to join the Pamunkey just below Hanovertown. Weary
The Forty Days
[277]
Mi ^ *
from better than forty miles of marching — southeast for two days,
then southwest for another — the Federals approached the marsh-
fringed creek at last, within ten miles of Richmond, only to find Lee
drawn up to meet them on the opposite bank, guns emplaced and all
three corps arrayed for battle.
He had been there two days waiting for Grant to make a com-
mitment. Before sundown of May 27, whose dawn showed the enemy
gone from the North Anna, he had covered the eighteen miles from
Hanover Junction to Atlee, where he took up a position from which
he could block a variety of ap-
proaches by the wide-ranging
bluecoats, either around the
headwaters of the Totopotomoy,
which would put them back
astride the vital railroad north of
Richmond, or down across the
creek for a five-mile sprint to the
Chickahominy and a quick de-
scent on the capital only four
miles beyond. Still obliged by
his intestinal disorder to continue
using the borrowed carriage, he
rode in the lead with Ewell's
corps — but not with its com-
mander, who made the trip in an ambulance, racked by the same malady
that afflicted Lee. Ewell was so much worse next day that he had to
yield his place to Early and accept a sick leave of indefinite length; which
meant that the army now had two of its three corps, four of its nine in-
fantry divisions, and sixteen of its thirty-five original brigades under men
who had not led them at the start of the campaign. Warned that elements
of the Union host were across the Pamunkey at Hanovertown, Lee sent
Hampton and Fitzhugh Lee to Haw's Shop to discover whether the
crossing included infantry — and, if so, where it was headed. Unless he
knew that, he could not move out to meet the invaders, lest they slip
around one of his flanks for a lunge at Richmond from the north or the
northeast.
The result was the largest cavalry engagement since Brandy Sta-
tion, just under a year ago. After seven hours of savage combat,
mounted and dismounted, with heavy losses on both sides — especially in
a green South Carolina brigade whose troopers arrived in time for a
share in a fight that converted the survivors into veterans overnight —
Fitz and Hampton were obliged to give ground, but not before they
had driven Sheridan's horsemen back on their supports and taken
prisoners from both the V and VI Corps, which gave Lee at least half
the information he was seeking. Grant's infantry was indeed over the
[ 278] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
Pamunkey, already beyond Haw's Shop, and next day it began working
its way south and west along the north bank of the Totopotomoy, still
without disclosing whether it intended to cross or round the creek.
Fixed in position east of Atlee until he knew the answer, the
southern commander by now had received 10,000 reinforcements. This
amounted to about half his losses so far in the campaign: whereas
Grant had received some 40,000, roughly the number he had lost in
battle. Such disproportionate attrition could have but one result, and
Lee implied as much that afternoon to Jefferson Davis, who rode out
from the capital to see him for the first time since the opening of the
Federal offensive. Further reinforcements would have to come from
south of the James, of course, and the President was doubtful that any
could be spared from there; Beauregard had been protesting all week
that his force — which he had regrouped into two divisions, under
Robert Hoke and Bushrod Johnson, and which he kept reminding the
Commander in Chief was all that kept Butler's still-bottled army from
making a sudden breakout and a dash for the back door of Richmond
— had been bled down to, maybe past, the danger point. Davis made
it fairly clear, before he left, that the question of detaching more
troops from beyond the James would depend to a large extent on the
judgment of the commander of that department. That evening Beau-
regard himself appeared at Atlee for a conference, the upshot of which
was that, while he sympathized with Lee in all his troubles, he could
not see that they were any larger than his own. As for evidence ad-
vanced by Lee that Butler was sending men to Grant, the dapper
Creole admitted that perhaps 4000 had left Bermuda Hundred aboard
transports in the past few days, but he stressed the claim that a sub-
stantial 24,000 still remained to pop the cork he was trying to hold in
place with only half as many troops. "My force is so small at present,"
he had told Davis earlier today, "that to divide it for the purpose of
reinforcing Lee would jeopardize the safety of the part left to guard
my lines, and would greatly endanger Richmond itself." The most he
would agree to was a further study of the situation on his front, and
with that he departed to return there, leaving Lee no better off, even
in prospect, than he had been when the rather baffling conference
began.
Next morning, May 30, Grant pressed down closer along the
Totopotomoy, massing opposite Anderson in the center and overlapping
Early on the right; Hill, on the left, had only cavalry in his front. That
seemed to rule out the Virginia Central as the enemy objective, and
presently this view was strengthened by reports that two of the four
blue corps had crossed downstream and were taking up a position on
the near bank, facing west. Lee believed he saw now what the Federals
were up to, and also how to head them off: "After fortifying this line
The Forty Days [ 279 ]
they will probably make another move by their left flank over toward
the Chickahominy. This is just a repetition of their former movements.
It can only be arrested by striking at once at that part of their force
which has crossed the Totopotomoy."
These words were included in a message instructing Anderson
to support Early, whose corps, being on that flank, would lead the
attack designed to discourage this latest sidle around the Confederate
right to gain the Old Church Road, which led down across Beaver
Dam Creek to Mechanicsville, where the Seven Days had opened in
flame and blood. But even if he was successful in dealing with the
immediate threat to Richmond from this line, Lee saw a larger danger
looming. Beyond the Chickahominy lay the James, where McClellan
had found sanctuary after the holocaust of Malvern Hill. Fortunately,
the Washington authorities had not seen fit to sustain him in his position
on the north bank of that river, nor to approve his proposal that he cross
it for a movement against Richmond from the south, astride its lines
of supply from Georgia and the Carolinas. Grant was no Little Mac,
however, and the high command might well have learned a lesson from
what had followed its failure to sustain his predecessor. In speaking to
Early, who was preparing to attack at midday, Lee did not say, as he
had said to Anderson, that the Federal threat must be "arrested"; he
said, rather, that the Federals themselves must be destroyed. Otherwise
the contest would come down to what he wanted to avoid, the loss of
all freedom to maneuver.
"We must destroy this army of Grant's before he gets to James
River," he told Early. "If he gets there it will become a siege, and then
it will be a mere question of time."
Unfortunately, Early came closer to wrecking his newly inherited
corps than he did to destroying even a portion of Grant's army. Re-
peating Hill's error at Jericho Adills, he attacked with one division and
failed to bring the other two up promptly to exploit the initial success.
Counterattacked from Bethesda Church, his objective on the Old
Church Road, he barely managed to hold his ground, and Anderson
only arrived in time for a share in the defensive action. Lee rebuked
neither of them for the botched performance, in part because they were
busy intrenching their new line, which at least forestalled an advance
down the ridge between Beaver Dam and Totopotomoy creeks, and in
part because of a report that reached him about the time it became
apparent that the attack had failed — a report so alarming in its impli-
cations that it took precedence over his other dire concerns. Grant's
new supply base was at White House Landing, fifteen miles down the
Pamunkey from Hanovertown; Lee now received word that sub-
stantial reinforcements, identified as Smith's whole corps from Butler's
army, were unloading there from transports which had left Bermuda
[ 28o] THE CIVIL WAR3T1864
Hundred yesterday for an overnight trip down the James and up the
York.
Grievous though it was to learn that he soon would be facing
still a fifth blue corps with his embattled three, the danger here was
more than numerical. From his debarkation point at White House,
Smith was free to march due west, unhindered, to a position beyond
Grant's left (to Cold Harbor, for example, a vital crossroads three miles
southeast of Bethesda Church, where the Union line was anchored
south of the Totopotomoy after standing firm against Early's mis-
managed assault) and thus extend it beyond the reach of Lee's already
thin-stretched right for a rapid swing around that flank and a leap
across the Chickahominy. Convinced that this was what Grant had in
mind, because it was what he would have attempted in his place, Lee
first did what he could to meet the threat with what he had on hand in
that direction: meaning cavalry. He sent Fitz Lee instructions to take
up a position at Cold Harbor and hang on there until he was reinforced,
hopefully by morning.
As things now stood, such reinforcements could not come from
Hill or Anderson or Early, whose withdrawal from any part of the line
would open the way for Grant to move on Atlee or Mechanicsville.
They could come from only one source, beyond the James, and Lee
had no time to spare for going through regular channels to procure
them. Abandoning protocol he telegraphed an urgent request directly
to Beauregard for every man he could spare, and when the Creole
replied at sunset that the War Department would have to decide
"when and what troops to order from here," Lee appealed by wire to
the President in Richmond: "General Beauregard says the Department
must determine what troops to send. . . . The result of this delay will
be disaster. Butler's troops (Smith's corps) will be with Grant to-
morrow. Hoke's division, at least, should be with me by light tomorrow."
It was unlike Lee to use the unequivocal word "disaster," and
because it was unlike him it got immediate results. Davis promptly
instructed Bragg to send Beauregard a peremptory order detaching
Hoke's division for shipment by rail to Lee without delay, and before
midnight Lee was informed that every effort was being made to get
Hoke and his four brigades north of the Chickahominy by morning.
Once more it was as if Lee had sat in on his adversary's councils
or even paid him a visit inside his head. Dissatisfied with the Totopoto-
moy confrontation (as well he might be; it had cost him another
2013 killed and wounded and missing, first at Haw's Shop and then
along the mazy fringes of the creek, with no gain except the infliction
of about an equal number of casualties) Grant by now had decided
to try another sidle: a brief one, this time, aimed at just the crossroad
Lee predicted he would head for.
The Forty Days [ 281 ]
The choice of Cold Harbor was natural enough. It was there —
well clear of the toils of the Totopotomoy, but not quite into those of the
treacherous Chickahominy — that the roads from Bethesda Church and
White House Landing came together, enabling him to extend his left
for a meeting with Baldy Smith, whose corps was debarking fifteen miles
due east. Depending more on celerity than surprise, which seemed to
be unobtainable here in Virginia anyhow, Grant counted on a rapid
concentration at that point for a concerted drive up the left bank of
the Chickahominy, one that would strike the assembling rebels before
they got set to resist it and would pen them up for capture or destruction
with their backs to Powhite Creek, less than two miles west, or Beaver
Dam Creek, another three miles upstream; after which he would
cross the river with all five corps, either below Mechanicsville or beyond
at Meadow Bridge, for a quick descent on Richmond. Accordingly,
while Lee was instructing his nephew Fitz to hold Cold Harbor against
all comers, Grant sent word for Sheridan to seize and hang onto that
vital hub until Wright, crossing in rear of Hancock on the Totopotomoy
and then in rear of Burnside and Warren at Bethesda Church, arrived
for a meeting with Smith at the end of his march from White House.
The result next day, May 31, was another all-out cavalry engagement.
This too was a nearly all-day fight, with no infantry involved on
either side till after sunset. Beauregard's bridling reaction to Lee's re-
quest for troops had delayed Hoke's departure so effectively that his
lead brigade did not unload at Meadow Bridge until near midday, and
consequently did not complete its eight-mile hike down the north bank
of the Chickahominy until dusk was gathering on the scene of Fitz
Lee's long-drawn-out defense of the crossroad his uncle had asked him
to hold. As for the Federals, there was no infantry in the attacking
columns even then. Concerned with keeping his withdrawal secret in
order to give him a decent head start in the shift to the southeast,
Grant instructed Wright to wait for nightfall before he set out on a
march that was necessarily roundabout, through Haw's Shop, since there
was no direct road available down across the Totopotomoy; he would
arrive tomorrow morning at the soonest. Smith's delay was for other
reasons, mostly involving slip-ups on Grant's staff. His original orders,
issued when he embarked two days ago at Bermuda Hundred, called for
a march from White House, up the south bank of the Pamunkey to
New Castle, and from there to a position supporting the main effort
on the Totopotomoy. Since then, Grant's plans had changed, but not
Smith's orders, which were forgotten in all the flurry of preparation
for the latest sidle. Completing his White House debarkation by mid-
afternoon, May 31, Smith struck out northwestward, at a tangent to
his intended route due west. Though he called a halt that night near
Old Church, two miles short of his assigned objective, to send a wire re-
questing clarification from headquarters — it seemed to him he was
[282] THE CIVIL WAR3P"1864
moving into a military vacuum — the reply came back, after some delay,
that his orders stood: he was to continue his march to New Castle. This
he did, getting farther and farther at every step from the scene of the
daylong engagement, now six miles in his left rear, which Sheridan had
had to fight alone.
Little Phil frequently preferred it thus, so long at least as what
opposed him was cavalry on its own. That was the case here, but he
found it difficult to budge or even get at the graybacks, who declined
to fight him in the smash-up style he favored. Instead, when he came
within a mile of the crossroads about midday, with Torbert's three
brigades — Torbert himself, up from his sickbed, had returned to duty
the week before — he discovered Fitz Lee's two brigades dismounted
and crouched behind fence-rail breastworks, which gave them the
advantage of taking aim from an un jogged platform, with little ex-
posure to the rapid-firing weapons of the horsemen galloping toward
them. In their rear was Cold Harbor, a name of British derivation
signifying an inn that afforded overnight lodging without hot food,
adopted here because of the settlement's main feature, a frame tavern
set in a triangular grove of trees at the intersection of five roads coming
in from all round the compass. Charges by Merritt and Custer were
repulsed before they could be pressed home, and as the afternoon wore
on it became evident that standard cavalry tactics would not serve;
Sheridan had Torbert dismount his men and work them forward,
troop by troop, while their fellows provided covering fire to make the
defenders keep their heads down. Swarming over the dusty fields and
through the brush, pumping lead from their stubby carbines, the blue
troopers in their tight-fitting trousers, bobtail jackets, and short-billed
kepis looked to one observer "as though they had been especially
equipped for crawling through knotholes."
It was a slow and costly business, involving much risk and a good
many wounds. Giving up on Baldy Smith after a patrol returned from
a fruitless eastward search for some sign of his 15,000-man corps,
Sheridan sent for Gregg to come down from Bethesda Church and add
his two brigades to the effort being exerted, but the sun was down
behind the trees along Powhite Creek by the time the courier rode
off with the summons. As it turned out, such reinforcements as reached
the field before full dark were Confederate, and infantry at that.
Hard-pressed by the agile blue troopers, who were about within
range for a mass charge through the gathering dusk, Fitz Lee's men looked
over their shoulders and, seeing Hoke's lead brigade moving toward
them up the road past the triangular grove of trees, decided the time
had come to fall back on these overdue supports. They did so, only to
find that the startled foot soldiers fell back too. Hot and tired from their
dusty trek down the Chickahominy, and softened by two weeks of
inactivity in the southside trenches, they joined what they took to be
The Forty Days [ 283 ]
— and what now became — a general retreat, to and through Cold
Harbor; which their pursuers seized and occupied, rounding up some
fifty laggard graybacks in the process. Sheridan's elation over his
sudden victory was modified considerably, however, when he learned
from these captives that three more brigades of infantry would soon
be up to join the one he had scattered. He decided, despite the arrival
of Gregg's division hard on the heels of the rout, that his wisest course
would be to pull back from the tavern crossroads before he was over-
run. "I do not feel able to hold this place," he notified Meade as the
withdrawal got under way. "With the heavy odds against me here,
I do not think it prudent to hold on."
Meade thought otherwise, and so did Grant, in view of the
sidle now in progress and the intended concentration there; Cold
Harbor was to be reoccupied and "held at all hazards," they replied.
Little Phil reversed his march, disposed his two divisions about the
southwest quadrant of the crossroads, and had the dismounted troopers
get to work in the darkness, throwing up temporary breastworks to
provide them with cover for meeting the attack he expected would
come with the dawn, if not sooner.
It would come with the dawn, and the odds would be even heavier
than Sheridan had feared when he pulled back, saying, "I do not think
it prudent to hold on." Lee was about to go over to the offensive.
What was more, in preparation for bloodier work to follow, he in-
tended to begin with the retaking of the ground the troopers stood on.
Far from being discouraged by his nephew's report that the cross-
roads had been seized by Sheridan, he saw in this development confirma-
tion of his suspicion that Grant had another sidle in progress, that Cold
Harbor was his intended point of concentration, and that so far he had
nothing there but cavalry; which meant that his infantry was still in
motion in that direction, strung out on roads converging from the north
and east, and might therefore be defeated in detail as it came up —
provided, of course, that Lee could get there first with a force sub-
stantial enough to inflict the damage he had in mind. He thought he
could. Hoke's division was assembling there already, and this was only
a fraction of what had become available now that Grant had tipped
his hand. Formerly fixed in position east of Atlee by the danger that the
Federals would round the headwaters of the Totopotomoy to turn
his left, Lee was now free to draw troops from there for use on the
opposite flank. His choice was Anderson, whose strength was up to
three divisions for the first time in the campaign, Pickett having re-
joined him on the march from Hanover Junction. Both the Third and
the Second corps had had their turns at offensive action, Hill eight
days ago on the North Anna and Early here at Bethesda Church the
day before, and both had failed. Now the First — Old Peter's de-
[284] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
pendables, who had rolled up the blue flank in the Wilderness and won
the hairbreadth race for Spotsylvania — would have its turn. Anderson
was told to pull back from his position on the Totopotomoy, leaving
Little Powell to fill the gap, and make a night march down below Cold
Harbor to join Hoke, who was placed under his command for the
attack, first on Sheridan, to get possession of the crossroads shortly after
dawn, and then on the other Union columns as they arrived from the
east and north.
Though he still had not recovered sufficiently from his illness to
resume direction of tactical operations, Lee advanced his headquarters
to Shady Grove Church, a couple of miles southeast of Atlee Station, to
be at least that much nearer the scene of tomorrow's action. Two years
ago this evening, riding back from the confused field of Seven Pines
— less than ten miles from where he would camp tonight — he had been
informed by the President that he would replace the fallen Johnston,
and next day he had assumed command of the Army of Northern
Virginia. As he retired to his tent in the churchyard tonight to sleep
out the final hours of this bloodiest May in American history, he had
cause for hope that he would celebrate tomorrow's anniversary with
an offensive victory as glorious as the one he had begun to plan on that
night two years ago, when McClellan's vast blue host hovered within
even easier reach of Richmond than Grant's did now.
There was no occasion for any such celebration on the hot first
day of June, only a sorry repetition of the ineptness which had led
Grant to believe that the fight had gone out of Lee's army. Anderson
moved promptly enough, pulling Kershaw's division out of line in plenty
of time for the march across Early's rear and into position on Hoke's
left before daylight. His notion was to knock Sheridan back from the
crossroads with a dawn attack by these two divisions, then continue the
operation when the other two arrived. But a notion was all it remained.
Kershaw went forward on schedule, giving his old brigade the lead,
and that was when the trouble began and the offensive ended. Colonel
Lawrence Keitt, a forty-year-old former congressman, had brought his
green but handsomely uniformed regiment up from South Carolina the
week before, and by virtue of his seniority over the other colonels took
command of the brigade. Long on rank but short on combat experi-
ence, he went into his first attack in the gallant style of 1861, leading
the way on a spirited gray charger; only to be killed by the first rattling
clatter of semiautomatic fire from the two divisions of cavalry in the
breastworks just ahead.
That was what had been expected by seasoned observers, who
saw in Keitt's display only "inexperience and want of self control,"
but the reaction among his troops, recently uprooted from two years of
languid garrison life in their home state, was something else. When they
saw the colonel get toppled from his saddle — transformed, in the wink
The Forty Days [ 285 ]
of an eye, from a saber- waving cynosure into a mangled corpse — they
broke for the rear in what a dismayed artillerist called "the most abject
rout ever committed by men in Confederate uniform." Nor was that
the worst of the shame. "Some were so scared they could not run, but
groveled on the ground trying to burrow into the earth." Veteran
regiments on their flanks were obliged to give way too; the advance
dissolved in panic, unredeemed by Hoke, who had not moved at all.
First the brigade and then the division as a whole pulled out of range
of the fast-firing Union carbines. Kershaw got the fallback stopped
and even attempted to mount another attack, but it went no better. By
the time Pickett and Field came up to form on Kershaw's left, around mid-
morning, so had Wright arrived with his three divisions in relief of
Sheridan, who retired with pride from the defense of what he called
"our little works."
They did not stay little long; Wright's men got busy with picks
and shovels, deepening and extending them north and south to cover
the western approaches to Cold Harbor. Smith's wandering corps
slogged wearily into position alongside Wright that afternoon, reaching
up to connect with Warren, whose four divisions occupied two miles
of line below the Old Church Road, beyond which Burnside anchored
the northern flank to the south bank of the Totopotomoy. That left
only Hancock's corps and Sheridan's third division north of the creek;
Grant sent word for Hancock to withdraw at nightfall for a march to
the far left, where Torbert and Gregg were patrolling a boggy two-
mile extension of the line down to the Chickahominy. He was instructed
to come up in time to take part in a dawn assault that would be launched
by all five corps.
Grant's decision to make such an attack was arrived at by a
process of elimination. This was coffin corner; another sidle would
involve him in the toils of the Chickahominy, and even if he cleared
them intact he would find himself confronted, when he swung back
west, by Richmond's permanent defenses. He would, in short, be
mounting a siege, which at this stage he wanted as little as Lee did,
since it represented the stalemate he had avoided from the start. His
decision, then, despite the shocks and throes of the past four weeks —
the stunning repulse in the green riot of the Wilderness and the unrelieved
horror of Spotsylvania, which together had cost him a solid third of the
infantry that crossed the Rapidan, and the close call on the North Anna,
where incaution had nearly cost him the other two thirds, along with
his reinforcements — was to attack the old fox where he was, or anyhow
where he would be tomorrow morning. If this was coffin corner for
Grant, it was something worse for Lee, whose back was to the wall of his
capital and who would have neither time nor space for recovery if
even a limited breakthrough could be scored. Grant kept his mind on
that agreeable possibility, and when Meade suggested that something
[286] THE CIVIL WAR ^ 1864
might be done with what was left of today, by way of improving
tomorrow's chances, he was altogether willing.
Meade proposed a preliminary effort, restricted to the southern
half of his present line, to give Wright and Smith a closer hug on
the rebel works along their front and better jump-off positions from
which to launch their share of the all-out dawn assault. That was
how it came about that Anderson, whose four divisions were busy in-
trenching three miles of line, north and south of a road leading due east
to Cold Harbor, was struck by a six-division attack, shortly after 5
o'clock, which not only disposed of any vestigial intention to resume
his boggled offensive, but also came close to driving him from his un-
completed works. Pickett and Field held firm under pressure, but
a break quickly developed between Hoke's left, where a brigade gave
way in panic, and Kershaw's right. Anderson detached a brigade from
Pickett to heal the breach, and by sunset the line was approximately
restored. Yet the fact remained that, at a moderate price in casualties
— moderate, that is, as such things went in this campaign: about 1000
for Smith, 1200 for Wright — Meade had secured the jump-off positions
he wanted for tomorrow. Anderson's losses had been light, consisting
mainly of stragglers captured when Hoke's left gave way, but he saw
only too clearly what might come of this. "Reinforcements are neces-
sary to enable us to hold this position," he notified Lee that night.
This message, conveying Anderson's doubts that he could hold
the ground he had been ordered to advance from, put a dispiriting
end to an anniversary which had dawned with high hopes that it would
close with the celebration of an offensive victory. For the third time in
nine days, a corps commander had shown himself incapable of mounting
a sustained attack, even under favorable circumstances.
One thing common to all three attempts, in addition to failure,
was that neither Lee nor his "poor Stuart" had taken part in them
first hand. Jeb of course was gone for good, three weeks in his grave,
and Lee was still in no condition for personal conduct of operations in
the field; but that did not mean that the ailing general would not keep
to his task of devising plans for the frustration of the invaders of his
country and his state. Foiled in his efforts to go over to the offensive, he
would continue to improvise a defensive in which, so far, he had
managed to inflict casualties in ratio to the odds he faced at the open-
ing of the campaign. In this connection he had already moved to meet
Anderson's needs before they were expressed, ordering Breckinridge
to take up a position on Hoke's right tonight, and now he followed
through with instructions that would add Hill's three divisions to the
line tomorrow, one on the left of Early and two on the right beyond
Breckinridge, tying those flanks respectively to the Totopotomoy and
the Chickahominy. All this would take time, however — first for march-
ing, then for digging — and Grant was bristling aggressively all along
The Forty Days f 287 ]
the seven miles of Confederate front when the sun came up on the
second day of June.
Fortunately, despite the flurry, there was no attack; Lee had
plenty of time to look to the extension and improvement of his line.
Mounting Traveller for the first time in ten days, he rode down to
Mechanicsville, where he found Breckinridge and his two brigades
enjoying a leisurely breakfast, midway through their march to the far
right. He got the distinguished Kentuckian back on the road again and
then resumed his ride, eastward past Walnut Grove Church to his new
headquarters beyond Gaines Mill, a mile and a half due west of Union-
held Cold Harbor and about the same distance northwest of the scene
of his first victory, scored two years ago this month, when Hood and
Law broke Fitz-John Porter's line on Turkey Hill, now also Union-
held. Mindful of the importance of that feature of the terrain, Lee had
Breckinridge go forward, about 3 o'clock that afternoon, and with the
assistance of one of Hill's divisions, which had just come up, drive a
brigade of bluecoats off its slopes, thus affording his artillery a position
from which to dominate the Chickahominy bottoms on the right.
Simultaneously on the left, Early's corps and Hill's remaining division
felt out the Federal installations above Old Church Road, on toward
the Totopotomoy, and after brushing aside a sizeable body of skir-
mishers, who yielded stubbornly, confronted the main enemy works
northwest and north of Bethesda Church.
While these two adjustments were being made at opposite ends
of the long line, a heavy rain began to fall, first in big individual drops,
pocking the dust like buckshot scattered broadcast, and then in a steady
downpour that turned the dust to mud. The discomfort was minor on
both sides, compared to the relief from heat and glare and the dis-
traction from waiting to receive or deliver the attack both knew was
soon to be made, if not today then certainly tomorrow.
Rain often had a depressing effect on Lee, perhaps because it
reminded him of the drenched fiasco his first campaign had been, out in
western Virginia in the fall of 1861; but not now; now he valued it as
a factor that would make for muddy going when the Federals moved
against him. Back at his headquarters, near the ruins of Dr William
Gaines's once imposing four-story gristmill on Powhite Creek — Sheri-
dan's troopers had burned it when they passed this way two weeks
ago, returning from the raid that killed Jeb Stuart — the southern com-
mander kept to his tent, still queasy from his ten-day illness, reading
the day's reports while rain drummed on the canvas overhead. He had
done all he could to get all the troops he could muster into line. "Send
to the field hospitals," he had told his chief lieutenants in a circular
issued the last day of May, "and have every man capable of performing
the duties of a soldier returned to his command." Such efforts, combined
with those of Davis, who had summoned reinforcements from as far
[z88] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
away as Florida in the course of the past two weeks, had brought his
strength back up to nearly 60,000. Grant had about 110,000 across the
way, but Lee feared the odds no more here than he had done elsewhere.
In fact he feared them less; for, thanks to Grant's forbearance today —
whatever its cause — he had had plenty of time to dispose his army
as he chose. Having done so, he was content to leave the rest to God
and the steady valor of his troops, whose defensive skill had by now
become instinctive.
This last applied in particular to the use they made of terrain
within their interlocking sectors. Whether the ground was flat or hilly,
bare or wooded, firm or boggy — and it was all those things from point
to various point along the line from Pole Green Church to Grapevine
Bridge — they never used it more skillfully than here. Occupying their
assigned positions with a view to affording themselves only so much
protection as would not interfere with the delivery of a maximum of
firepower, they flowed onto and into the landscape as if in response to
a natural law, like water seeking its own level. The result, once they
were settled in, was by no means as imposing as the fortifications they
had thrown up three weeks ago at Spotsylvania or last week on the
North Anna. But that too was part of the design. No such works were
needed here and they knew it, having installed them with concern that
they not appear so formidable as to discourage all hope of success in
the minds of the Federal planners across the way. Crouched in the
dripping blackness after sundown, with both flanks securely anchored
on rising streams and Richmond scarcely ten miles in their rear, the
defenders asked for nothing better, in the way of reward for their
craftsmanship and labor, than that their adversaries would advance
into the meshed and overlapping fields of fire they had established,
unit by unit, along their seven miles of front.
They were about to get their wish. Indeed, they would have
gotten it at dawn today — ten hours before they completed their
concentration and were in any condition to receive it — except that
Hancock's three divisions had not arrived on the Union left until about
6.30, two hours late and in no shape for fighting, tired and hungry
as they were from their grueling all-night march. Grant accepted the
delay as unavoidable, and rescheduled the attack for 5 o'clock that
afternoon. That would do about as well, he seemed to think. But
then, as the jump-off hour drew near, the rebs went into action on both
flanks, seizing Turkey Hill and driving the outpost skirmishers back
on their works above Bethesda Church. This called for some changes
in the stand-by orders, and Grant, still unruffled, postponed the attack
once more until 4.30 next morning. After all, all he wanted was a
breakthrough, almost anywhere along those six or seven miles of enemy
line; he could see that a hot supper and a good night's rest would add
to the strength and steadiness of the men when they went forward.
The Forty Days
289
Mile 1
Grapevine Bridge
Aside from a general directive that the main effort would be
made by the three corps on the left, where the opposing works were
close together as a result of yesterday's preliminary effort, tactics seemed
to have gone by the board, at least on the upper levels of command.
Neither Grant nor Meade, or for that matter any member of their
two staffs, had reconnoitered any part of the Confederate position;
nor had either of them organized the attack itself in any considerable
detail, including the establishment of such lateral communications as
might be needed to assure cooperation between units. Apparently they
assumed that all such incidental problems had been covered by a
sentence in Meade's circular postponing the late-afternoon attack till
dawn: "Corps commanders will employ the interim in making examina-
tions of the ground on their front and perfecting the arrangements for
the assault." New as he was to procedure in the Army of the Potomac,
Baldy Smith — "aghast," he later wrote, "at the reception of such an
order, which proved conclusively the utter absence of any military
plan" — sent a note to Wright, who was on his left, "asking him to
let me know what was to be his plan of attack, that I might conform to
it, and thus have two corps acting in unison." Wright's reply was
simply that he was "going to pitch in": which left Smith as much in
[290] THE CIVIL WAR35-1864
the dark as before, and even more aghast. Grant, in short, was proceed-
ing here at Cold Harbor as if he subscribed quite literally to the words
he had written Halleck from the North Anna, a week ago today: "I
feel that our success over Lee's army is already assured."
Up on the line, that was by no means the feeling prevalent among
the troops who were charged with carrying out the orders contrived
to bring about the result expected at headquarters. Unlike their rear-
ward superiors, they had been uncomfortably close to the rebel works
all day and knew only too well what was likely to come of any effort
to assault them, let alone such a slipshod one as this. Their reaction was
observed by Lieutenant Colonel Horace Porter, a young West Pointer,
formerly an aide to McClellan and now serving Grant in the same
capacity. Passing through the camps that rainy evening, he later wrote,
"I noticed that many of the soldiers had taken off their coats and
seemed to be engaged in sewing up rents in them." He thought this
strange, at such a time, but when he looked closer he "found that the
men were calmly writing their names and home addresses on slips of
paper and pinning them on the backs of their coats, so that their bodies
might be recognized and their fate made known to their families at
home."
Some went even further in their gloom. A blood-stained diary,
salvaged from the pocket of a dead man later picked up on the field,
had this grisly final entry: "June 3. Cold Harbor. I was killed."
They came with the dawn and they came pounding, three blue
corps with better than 60,000 effectives, striking for three points along
the center and right center of the rebel line, which had fewer men
defending its whole length than now were assaulting half of it. Ad-
vancing with a deep-throated roar — "Huzzah! Huzzah!" a Confederate
thought they were yelling — the attackers saw black slouch hats sprout
abruptly from the empty-looking trenches up ahead, and then the works
broke into flame. A heavy bank of smoke rolled out, alive with muzzle
flashes, and the air was suddenly full of screaming lead. "It seemed
more like a volcanic blast than a battle," one Federal later said, "and
was just about as destructive."
Dire as their expectations had been the night before, they per-
ceived now for the first time the profoundly intricate nature of the
deadfall Lee had devised for their undoing. Never before, in this or
perhaps in any other war, had so large a body of troops been exposed
to such a concentration of firepower; "It had the fury of the Wilderness
musketry, with the thunders of the Gettysburg artillery superadded,"
an awed cannoneer observed from his point of vantage in the Union
rear. And now, too, the committed victims saw the inadequacy of
Grant's preparation in calling for a three-pronged assault, directed
against three vague and widely spaced objectives. Smith on the right
The Forty Days [ 291 ]
was enfiladed from his outer flank, as was Hancock on the left, and
Wright, advancing between them with a gap on either side, found
both of his flanks exposed at once to an even crueler flailing. What
was worse, the closer the attackers got to the concave rebel line, the
more this crossfire was intensified and the more likely an individual
was to be chosen as a simultaneous target by several marksmen in the
works ahead. "I could see the dust fog out of a man's clothing in two
or three places where as many balls would strike him at the same
moment," a defender was to say.
Under such conditions, losses tended to occur in ratio to the success
of various units in closing the range. Barlow's division for example,
leading Hancock's charge against Lee's right, struck a lightly defended
stretch of boggy ground in Breckinridge's front and plunged on
through to the main line, which buckled under sudden pressure from the
cheering bluecoats. Barlow, not yet thirty — "attired in a flannel
checked shirt, a threadbare pair of trousers, and an old blue kepi," he
looked to a staff observer "like a highly independent mounted news-
boy" — was elated to think he had scored the breakthrough Grant
had called for. But his elation was short-lived. Attached to one of Hill's
divisions on the adjoining slope of Turkey Hill, Joseph Finegan, who
had arrived that week with two Florida battalions and been put in charge
of a scratch brigade, counterattacked without waiting to be prompted
and quickly restored the line, demonstrating here in Virginia the sav-
agery he had shown at Olustee, three months ago in his home state.
Barlow's men were ousted, losing heavily in the process, and it was much
the same with others up the line. Though nowhere else was there a
penetration, even a temporary one, wherever the range became point-
blank the attack dissolved in horror; the attackers huddled together, like
sheep caught in a hailstorm, and milled about distractedly in search of
what little cover the terrain afforded. "They halted and began to dodge,
lie down, and recoil," a watching gray back would remember, while
another noted that "the dead and dying lay in front of the Confederate
line in triangles, of which the apexes were the bravest men who came
nearest to the breastworks under that withering, deadly fire."
The attack, now broken, had lasted just eight minutes. So brief
was its duration, and so abrupt its finish, that some among the defenders
had trouble crediting the fact that it had ended, while others could
scarcely believe it had begun; not in earnest, at any rate. One of Hoke's
brigadiers, whose troops were holding a portion of the objective assigned
to Wright, square in the center of the three-corps Federal effort, after-
wards testified that he "was not aware at any time of any serious assault
having been given."
Part of the reason for this was the lightness of Confederate losses,
especially as compared to those inflicted, although these last were not
known to have been anything like as heavy as they were until the smoke
[ 292 ] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
began to clear. An Alabama colonel, whose regiment had three men
killed and five wounded, peered out through rifts in the drifting smoke
along his front, where Smith had attacked with close-packed ranks, and
saw to his amazement that "the dead covered more than five acres of
ground about as thickly as they could be laid." Eventually the doleful
tally showed that while Lee was losing something under 1500, killed and
wounded in the course of the day, Grant lost better than 7000, most of
them in the course of those first eight minutes.
The attack had ended, but neither by Grant's intention nor with
his consent. No sooner had the Union effort slackened than orders came
for it to be renewed, and when Wright protested that he could accom-
plish nothing unless Hancock and Smith moved forward to protect his
flanks, he was informed that they had filed the same complaint about his
lack of progress in the center, which left them equally exposed. Faced
with this dilemma, headquarters instructed each of the corps commanders
to go forward on his own, without regard for what the others might
be doing.
Up on the line, such instructions had a quality of madness, and a
colonel on Wright's staff did not hesitate to say so. "To move that army
farther, except by regular approaches," he declared, "was a simple and
absolute impossibility, known to be such by every officer and man of
the three corps engaged." Here too was a dilemma, and here too a simple
answer was forthcoming. When the order to resume the attack was re-
peated, unit commanders responded in the same fashion by having their
troops step up their rate of fire from the positions where they lay.
It went on like that all morning. Dodging shells and bullets, which
continued to fall abundantly, dispatch bearers crept forward with in-
structions for the assault to be renewed. The firing, most of it skyward,
would swell up and then subside, until another messenger arrived with
another order and the process was repeated, the men lying prone and
digging in, as best they could in such cramped positions, to provide
themselves with a little cover between blind volleys. Finally, an order
headed 1.30 came down to all three corps, eight minutes less than nine
hours after it had been placed in execution: "For the present all further
offensive operations will be suspended."
Over near Gaines Mill, with occasional long-range Federal pro-
jectiles landing in the clearing where his headquarters tent was pitched,
Lee had spent an anxious half hour awaiting the return of couriers sent
to bring him word of the outcome of the rackety assault, which opened
full-voiced on the right, down near the Chickahominy, and roared
quickly to a sustained climax, northward to the Totopotomoy. For all
he knew, the Union infantry might get there first to announce a break-
through half a mile east of the shell-pocked meadow overlooking the
ruined mill. Mercifully, though, the wait was brief. Shortly after sunrise
the couriers began returning on lathered horses, and their reports varied
The Forty Days [ 293 ]
only in degrees of exultation. "Tell General Lee it is the same all along
my front," A. P. Hill had said, pointing to where the limits of the enemy
advance were marked by windrows of the dead and dying. Confederate
losses were low; incredibly low, it seemed. Hoke, as an extreme example,
reported that so far, though the ground directly in front of his intrench-
ments was literally blue with fallen attackers, he had not lost a single
man in his division. In Anderson's corps, Law was hit in the head by a
stray bullet that was to take him away from his brigade for good, and
Breckinridge, after ending Barlow's costly short-term penetration, was
badly shaken up when his horse, struck by a solid shot, collapsed be-
tween his knees. No other high-ranking defender received so much as a
scratch or a bruise throughout the length of the gray line. By mid-
morning, with the close-up Union effort reduced to blind volleys of
musketry fired prone in response to orders for a resumption of the
attack, it was clear that Lee had won what a staff colonel was to call
"perhaps the easiest victory ever granted to Confederate arms by the
folly of Federal commanders."
Back in Richmond, although fighting had raged even closer to the
city throughout five of the Seven Days, two years ago, citizens had been
jolted awake that morning by the loudest firing they had ever heard.
Windows rattled with the coming of dawn and kept on rattling past
midday, one apprehensive listener declared, "as if whole divisions were
firing at a word of command."
No one could say, at that range, who was getting the worst and
who the best of it. Before noon, as a result, distinguished visitors began
arriving at Lee's headquarters in search of firsthand information. Among
them was Postmaster General John H. Reagan, who brought two lawyer
friends along to help find out how the battle was going. Lee told them
it was going well, up to now at least, and when they wondered if the
artillery wasn't unusually active here today, the general said it was, but
he added, with a gesture toward the contending lines, where the drumfire
of a hundred thousand rifles sounded to Reagan like the tearing of a
sheet: "It is that that kills men."
What reserves did he have on hand, they asked, in case Grant
managed a breakthrough at some point along his front?
"Not a regiment," Lee replied, "and that has been my condition
ever since the fighting commenced on the Rappahannock. If I shorten
my lines to provide a reserve, he will turn me. If I weaken my lines to
provide a reserve, he will break them."
Thinking this over, the three civilians decided it was time to leave,
and in the course of their ride back to the capital they met the President
coming out. Today was his fifty-sixth birthday. He had spent the morn-
ing, despite the magnetic clatter of the batteries at Cold Harbor, with
his three children and his wife, who was soon to be delivered of their
sixth; but after lunch, unable any longer to resist the pull of guns that
[294] THE CIVIL WAR5T1864
had been roaring for nine hours, he called for his horse and set out on
the nine-mile ride to army headquarters. There he found the situation
much as it had been described in a 1 o'clock dispatch ("So far every
attack has been repulsed," Lee wired) except that by now the Federals
had abandoned all pretense of resuming the assault. The staff atmosphere,
there in the clearing above Gaines Mill, was one of elation over a victory
in the making, if not in fact over one already achieved. Returning to
Richmond soon after dark, Davis was pleased to read a message Seddon
had just received from Lee in summary of the daylong battle, which
now had ended with his army intact and Grant's considerably dimin-
ished. "Our loss today has been small," the general wrote, "and our
success, under the blessing of God, all that we could expect."
Beyond the lines where Lee's men rested from their exertions, and
beyond the intervening space where the dead had begun to spoil in the
heat and the wounded cried for help that did not come, the repulsed
survivors brooded on the outcome of a solid month of fighting. This was
the thirtieth day since the two armies first made contact in the Wilder-
ness, and Union losses were swelling toward an average of 2000 men a
day. Some days it was less, some days more, and some days — this one,
for example — it was far more, usually as the result of a high-level mis-
calculation or downright blunder. Even Grant was infected by the
gloom into which his troops were plunged by today's addition to the
list of headlong tactical failures. "I regret this assault more than any one
I ever ordered," he told his staff that evening. Uncharacteristic as it was,
the remark made for a certain awkwardness in the group, as if he had
sought to relieve his anguish with a scream. "Subsequently the matter
was seldom referred to in a conversation," a junior staffer was to state.
Others were less reticent. "I think Grant has had his eyes opened,"
Meade wrote home, not without a measure of grim satisfaction, "and
is willing to admit now that Virginia and Lee's army is not Tennessee
and Bragg's army."
According to some observers, such an admission was a necessity if
the campaign was to continue. James Wilson, riding over for a visit,
found that several members of Grant's official family, including Rawlins,
"feared that the policy of direct and continuous attack, if persisted in,
would ultimately so decimate and discourage the rank and file that they
could not be induced to face the enemy at all. Certain it is," the cavalry-
man added, "that the 'smash-'em-up' policy was abandoned about that
time and was never again favored at headquarters." This would indeed
be welcome news, if it was true, but just now the army was in no shape
to take much note of anything except its weariness and depletion. A
line colonel, stunned and grimy from not having had a full night's sleep
or a change of clothes since May 5, found himself in no condition to
write more than a few bleak lines in a family letter. "I can only tell my
wife I am alive and well," he said; "I am too stupid for any use."
The Forty Days [ 295 ]
In the past month the Army of the Potomac, under Grant, had
lost no less than half as many men as it had lost in the previous three
years under McDowell, McClellan, Pope, Burnside, Hooker, and Meade
on his own. Death had become a commonplace, though learning to live
with it produced a cumulative strain. High-strung Gouverneur Warren,
whose four bled-down divisions had fewer troops in them by now than
Wright's or Hancock's three, broke out tonight in sudden expostulation
to a friend: "For thirty days it has been one funeral procession past me,
and it has been too much!" Criticism was mounting, not only against
Grant, who had planned — or, strictly speaking, failed to plan — today's
attack, but also against those immediately below him on the military
ladder. "I am disgusted with the generalship displayed," young Emory
Upton wrote his sister on the morning after the battle. "Our men have,
in many cases, been foolishly and wantonly slaughtered." Next day, con-
tinuing the letter, he went further in fixing the blame. "Our loss was
very heavy, and to no purpose. . . . Some of our corps commanders are
not fit to be corporals. Lazy and indolent, they will not even ride along
their lines; yet, without hesitancy, they will order us to attack the
enemy, no matter what their position or numbers. Twenty thousand of
our killed and wounded should today be in our ranks."
Horror was added to bitterness by the suffering of the wounded,
still trapped between the lines, and the pervasive stench of the dead, still
unburied after two sultry nights and the better part of a third day under
the fierce June sun. "A deserter says Grant intends to stink Lee out of his
position, if nothing else will suffice," a Richmond diarist noted, but a
Federal staff colonel had a different explanation: "An impression prevails
in the popular mind, and with some reason perhaps, that a commander
who sends a flag of truce asking permission to bury his dead and bring
in his wounded has lost the field of battle. Hence the resistance upon our
part to ask a flag of truce."
No more willing to give that impression here in Virginia than he
had been a year ago in Mississippi, following the repulse of his two
assaults on the Vicksburg fortifications, the Union general held off
doing anything to relieve either the stench or the drawn-out agony of
his fallen soldiers until the afternoon of June 5, and even then he could
not bring himself to make a forthright request for the necessary Con-
federate acquiescence. "It is reported to me," he then wrote Lee, "that
there are wounded men, probably of both armies, now lying exposed
and suffering between the lines." His suggestion was that each side be
permitted to send out unarmed litter bearers to take up its casualties
when no action was in progress, and he closed by saying that "any other
method equally fair to both parties you may propose for meeting the
end desired will be accepted by me." But Lee, who had no wounded
out there, was not letting his adversary off that easy. "I fear that such an
arrangement will lead to misunderstanding and difficulty," he replied. "I
[ 296 ] THE CIVIL WAR»"1864
propose therefore, instead, that when either party desires to remove their
dead or wounded a flag of truce be sent, as is customary. It will always
afford me pleasure to comply with such a request as far as circumstances
will permit."
Thus admonished, Grant took another night to think the matter
over — a night in which the cries of the injured, who now had been
three days without water or relief from pain, sank to a mewling — and
tried a somewhat different tack, as if he were yielding, not without
magnanimity, to an urgent plea from a disadvantaged opponent. "Your
communication of yesterday is received," he wrote. "I will send im-
mediately, as you propose, to collect the dead and wounded between the
lines of the two armies, and will also instruct that you be allowed to
do the same." Not so, Lee answered for a second time, and after expres-
sing "regret to find that I did not make myself understood in my com-
munication," proceeded to make it clear that if what Grant wanted was
a cease-fire he would have to come right out and ask for it, not in-
formally, as between two men with a common problem, but "by a flag
of truce in the usual way." Grant put on as good a face as he could
manage in winding up this curious exchange. "The knowledge that
wounded men are now suffering from want of attention," he responded,
"compels me to ask a suspension of hostilities for sufficient time to collect
them in; say two hours."
By the time Lee's formal consent came back across the lines, how-
ever, the sun was down on the fourth day of exposure for the wounded
and even the mewling had reached an end. Going out next morning,
June 7, search parties found only two men alive out of all the Federal
thousands who had fallen in the June 3 assault; the rest had either died
or made it back under fire, alone or retrieved by comrades in the dark-
ness. At the end of the truce — which had to be extended to give the
burial details time to roll up the long blue carpet of festering corpses —
Grant fired a parting verbal shot in concluding his white-flag skirmish
with Lee: "Regretting that all my efforts for alleviating the sufferings of
wounded men left upon the battlefield have been rendered nugatory, I
remain, &c, U. S. Grant, Lieutenant General."
Lee made no reply to this, no doubt feeling that none was called
for, and not even the northern commander's own troops were taken in
by a blame-shifting pretense which did little more than show their chief
at his worst. They could discount the Copperhead charge that he was a
butcher, "a bull-headed Suvarov," since his methods so far had at least
kept the rebels on the defensive while his own army moved forward
more than sixty air-line miles. But this was something else, this sacrifice
of brave men for no apparent purpose except to salve his rankled pride.
Worst of all, they saw in the agony of their comrades, left to die amid
the corpses on a field already lost, a preview of much agony to come,
when they themselves would be left to whimper through days of pain
The Forty Days [ 297 ]
while their leader composed notes in defense of conduct which, so far
as they could see, had been indefensible from the start.
There was that, and there was the heat and thirst, the burning sun,
the crowded trenches, and always the snipers, deadly at close range. "I
hated sharpshooters, both Confederate and Union," a blue artillerist
would recall, "and I was always glad to see them killed." Because of
them, rations and ammunition had to be lugged forward along shallow
parallels that followed a roundabout zigzag course and wore a man down
to feeling like some unholy cross between a pack mule and a snake. "In
some instances," another observer wrote, "where regiments whose terms
of service had expired were ordered home, they had to leave the field
crawling on hands and knees through trenches to the rear." That was a
crowning indignity, that a man had to crouch to leave the war, at a
time when he wanted to crow and shout, and that even then he might
be killed on his way out. Devoured by lice and redbugs, which held
carnival in the filthy rags they wore for clothes and burrowed into flesh
that had not been washed for more than a month, the men turned
snappish, not only among themselves but toward their officers as well.
Tempers flared as the conviction grew that they were doing no earthly
good in their present position, yet they saw no way to change it without
abandoning their drive on Richmond, a scant ten miles away. At a cost
of more than 50,000 casualties, Grant had landed them in coffin corner
— and it did not help to recall, as a few surviving veterans could do, that
McClellan had attained more or less the same position, two years ago,
at practically no cost at all.
One who could remember that was Meade, the "damned old
goggle-eyed snapping turtle" who had contributed a minor miracle to
the campaign by holding onto his famous hair-trigger temper through a
month of tribulations and frustrations. But now, in the wake of Cold
Harbor, he lost it: lost it, moreover, in much the spectacular manner
which those who knew him best had been expecting all along.
Baldy Smith was the first to see it coming. Two days after the
triple-pronged assault was shattered, and with thousands of his soldiers
lying dead or dying in front of his works, Meade paid Smith a routine
visit, in the course of which the Vermonter asked him bluntly how he
"came to give such an order for battle as that of the 2d." According to
Baldy, Meade's reply was "that he had worked out every plan for every
move from the crossing of the Rapidan onward, that the papers were
full of the doings of Grant's army, and that he was tired of it and was
determined to let General Grant plan his own battles." The result, once
Grant had been left to his own devices, was the compounded misery out
there between the lines. Smith saw from this reaction what was coming
of the buildup of resentment, and two days later it came.
While the burial details were at work out front at last, Meade
glanced through a hometown newspaper, a five-day-old copy of the
[298] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
Philadelphia Inquirer, and his eye was caught by a paragraph that re-
ferred to him as being "entitled to great credit for the magnificent move-
ments of the army since we left Brandy, for they have been directed by
him. In battle he puts troops in action and controls their movements; in
a word, he commands the army. General Grant is here only because
he deems the present campaign the vital one of the war, and wishes to
decide on the spot all questions that would be referred to him as general-
in-chief." This was gratifying enough, but then the Pennsylvanian
moved on to the following paragraph, the one that brought on the fore-
seen explosion. "History will record, but newspapers cannot, that on one
eventful night during the present campaign Grant's presence saved the
army, and the nation too; not that General Meade was on the point of
committing a blunder unwittingly, but his devotion to his country made
him loth to risk her last army on what he deemed a chance. Grant as-
sumed the responsibility, and we are still on to Richmond."
Meade reacted fast. Though the piece was unsigned, he had the
Inquirer correspondent — one Edward Crapsey — brought to his tent,
confronted him with the article, and when the reporter admitted that
he had written it, demanded to know the source of his remarks. Crapsey
rather lamely cited "the talk of the camp," to the effect that after the
second day of battle in the Wilderness, with both flanks turned and his
center battered, only Grant had wanted to keep moving south. Enraged
by the repetition of this "base and wicked lie," Meade placed the of-
fender in arrest and had his adjutant draw up a general order directing
that he "be put without the lines [of the army] and not permitted to
return." The provost marshal was charged with the execution of the
order next morning, June 8, and he carried it out in style. Wearing on
his breast and back large placards lettered Libeler of the Press,
Crapsey was mounted face-rearward on a mule and paraded through the
camps to the accompaniment of the "Rogue's March," after which he
was less ceremoniously expelled. "The commanding general trusts that
this example will deter others from committing like offenses," Meade's
order read, "and he takes this occasion to notify the representatives of
the public press that ... he will not hesitate to punish with the utmost
rigor all [such] instances."
Whatever he might have "trusted," the outcome was that Meade
now had two wars on his hands, one with the rebels in his front, the
other with "the representatives of the public press" in his immediate
rear. Making his way to Washington, Crapsey recounted his woes to
newspaper friends, who were unanimous in condemning the general for
thus "wreaking his personal vengeance on an obscure friendless civilian."
What was more, their publishers backed them up; Meade, one said, was
"as leprous with moral cowardice as the brute that kicks a helpless cripple
on the street, or beats his wife at home." By way of retaliation for what
they called "this elaborate insult," they agreed that his name would
The Forty Days [ 299 ]
never be mentioned in dispatches except in connection with a defeat,
and they held to this for the next six months or more, with the result
that another casualty was added to the long Cold Harbor list, a victim of
journalistic strangulation.
Eleven months ago, the Gettysburg victor had been seen as a sure
winner in some future presidential election; but not now. Now and for
the rest of the year, a reporter noted privately, "Meade was quite as
much unknown, by any correspondence from the army, as any dead
hero of antiquity."
Meade had his woes, but so it seemed did everyone around him,
high or low, in the wake of a battle whose decisive action was over in
eight holocaustic minutes. Not only had it been lost, and quickly lost;
it had been lost, the losers now perceived, before it began. Despite the
distraction of wounds that smarted all the more from having been self-
inflicted, so to speak, this made for a certain amount of bitter intro-
spection at all levels, including the top. A colonel on Lee's staff, coupling
quotes from Grant and Hamlet — admittedly an improbable combina-
tion — remarked that the Union commander's resolution "to fight it
out on this line if it takes all summer" seemed, at this stage, to be "sicklied
o'er with the pale cast of thought."
It was in fact, all quips aside, a time for taking stock. Beyond the
knowledge that attrition was a knife that cut both ways, Grant had
accepted from the outset, as a condition of the tournament, the proba-
bility that the knife would slice deeper into the ranks of the attacker; but
how much deeper he hadn't known, till now. For twenty-nine days he
had been losing about two men to Lee's one, and if this was hard, it was
at any rate in proportion to the size of the two armies. Then came the
thirtieth day, Cold Harbor, and his loss was five to one, a figure made
even more doleful by the prospect that future losses were likely to be as
painfully disproportionate if he tried the same thing again in this same
region. Lodged as he was in coffin corner, it was no wonder if the cast of
his thought was sicklied o'er, along with the thoughts of those around
him, staff or line; Rawlins and Upton, for example. Moreover, the effect
of that month of losses was cumulative, like the expenses of a spender
on a spree, and during the lull which now ensued the bill came due.
Halleck sent him what amounted to a declaration of bankruptcy, or in
any case a warning that his credit was about to be cut off. On June 7,
while the burial details were at work and Meade was berating Crapsey
in his tent, Old Brains served notice from Washington that the bottom
of the manpower barrel was in sight: "I inclose a list of troops forwarded
from this department to the Army of the Potomac since the campaign
opened — 48,265 men. I shall send you a few regiments more, when
all resources will be exhausted till another draft is made."
[ 300] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
These were hard lines, coming as they did at this disappointing
juncture in the campaign. Just as the addition of Smith's 15,000 from the
Army of the James had not made up for the number who departed from
Meade's army because their enlistments had expired or they had broken
down physically under the thirty-day strain, so too was Halleck's figure,
even with the inclusion of those "few regiments more," considerably
short of the number who had been shot or captured in the course of the
month-long drive from the Rapidan to the Chickahominy. This would
make for restrictions, which in turn seemed likely to require a change in
style. Up to the present, Grant had been living as it were on interest,
replacing his fallen veterans with conscripts, but from now until another
of Lincoln's "calls" had been responded to, and the drafted troops ap-
proximately trained for use in the field, he would be living on principal.
Formerly replaceable on short notice, a man hit now would be simply
one man less, a flat subtraction from the dwindling mass. The law of
diminishing utility thus obtained, and though Grant no doubt would find
it cramping, if not prohibitive in its effect on his previous method of
sailing headlong into whatever got in his path, it afforded in any case
a gleam of hope for those around and under him. Some members of his
staff had expressed the fear that any attempt to repeat the army's latest
effort, here between the Totopotomoy and the Chickahominy, would
render it unfit for future use. Now they could stop worrying; at least
about that. Grant had no intention of provoking another Cold Harbor
and they knew it, not only because they had heard him express regret
that he had tried such a thing in the first place, but also because they
knew that he could no longer afford it, even if he changed his mind.
One possible source of reinforcements was the remnant of Butler's
army, still tightly corked in its bottle on the far side of the James and
doing no earthly good except for keeping Beauregard's even smaller
remnant from joining Lee. However, as a result of his casualties during
the corking operation and the subsequent detachment of Smith, the
cock-eyed general was down to about 10,000 men, scarcely enough to
warrant the trouble of getting them on and off transports and certainly
not enough to make any significant change in the situation north of the
Chickahominy. Besides, Grant's mind was turning now toward a use
for them in the region where they were. He still thought his plan for a
diversionary effort south of the James had been a good one; aside, that
is, from the designation of Butler as the man to carry it out. If a real
soldier, a professional rather than an all-thumbs amateur, had been in
over-all command — Baldy Smith, for example — Richmond might not
have fallen by now, but at least it would have been cut off from Georgia
and the Carolinas by the occupation of the Petersburg rail hub, and its
citizens would be tightening their belts another notch or two to relieve
far greater pangs of hunger than they were feeling with their supply
lines open to the south. Grant's notion was to reinforce Butler for a
The Forty Days [ 301 ]
breakout from Bermuda Neck, due west to Walthall Junction, or a sidle
across the Appomattox for a quick descent on Petersburg. Smith's corps
would go, he and his men being familiar with the southside terrain, and
possibly a corps or two from Meade. In fact, the more Grant thought
about it, there in the stench and dust around Cold Harbor, the more he
was persuaded that the thing to do was send Meade's whole army, not
only to assure the success of the operation beyond the James, but also to
resolve what was fast becoming a stalemate, here on the north bank of
the Chickahominy, and remove the troops from the scene of their most
disheartening repulse.
Halleck was against it before he even learned the details. He
preferred the slower but less risky investment of the Confederate capital
from the north, which would not expose the army to the danger of being
caught astride the James and would have the added virtue of covering
Washington if Lee reverted to his practice of disrupting Union strategy
with a strike across the Potomac. But Grant had had quite enough of
maneuvering in that region.
"My idea from the start has been to beat Lee's army, if possible,
north of Richmond," he admitted in a letter to the chief of staff on June
5, the day he opened negotiations for the burial of his dead, but he saw
now that "without a greater sacrifice of human life than I am willing
to make, all cannot be accomplished that I had designed." Then he told
just what it was he had in mind. "I will continue to hold substantially to
the ground now occupied by the Army of the Potomac, taking ad-
vantage of any favorable circumstance that may present itself, until the
cavalry can be sent to destroy the Virginia Central Railroad from about
Beaver Dam for some 25 or 30 miles west. When this is effected, I will
move the army to the south side of James River." Cut off from supplies
from the north and south, Lee would have no choice except to stay in-
side his capital and starve, abandon it to his foe, or come out and fight
for it in the open. Grant had no doubt about the outcome if his adversary,
as seemed likely from past usage, chose the third of these alternatives and
tried to stage another Seven Days. "The feeling of the two armies now
seems to be that the rebels can protect themselves only by strong in-
trenchments," he closed his letter, "while our army is not only confident
of protecting itself without intrenchments, but can beat and drive the
enemy whenever and wherever he can be found without this protec-
tion."
Then suddenly things began to happen fast. He learned that night
that while he had been writing to Halleck, outlining his plan without
committing himself to a schedule, Sigel's successor David Hunter had
scored a victory out in the Shenandoah Valley that would shorten
considerably the time Grant had thought he would have to devote to
smashing Richmond's northwestern supply line. Disdaining the combina-
tions his predecessor had favored — and which, it could be seen now,
[302] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
had contributed to the failure of that segment of the grand design for
Lee's defeat — Hunter had simply notified Crook and Averell that he
was heading south, up the Valley pike, and that they were to join him
as soon as they could make it across the Alleghenies from their camp
on the Greenbrier River. He set out from Cedar Creek on May 26, five
days after taking command of the troops whipped at New Market the
week before, and at the end of a ten-day hike up the turnpike, which he
interrupted from time to time to demolish a gristmill, burn a barn, or
drive off butternut horsemen trying to scout the column at long range,
he reached the village of Piedmont, eleven miles short of Staunton, and
found the rebels drawn up in his path, guns booming. Attacking forth-
with he wrecked and scattered what turned out to be three scratch
brigades, all that were left to defend the region after Breckinridge de-
parted. His reward, gained at a cost of less than 500 killed and
wounded, included more than 1000 prisoners, a solid fifth of the force
that had opposed him; the body of Brigadier General William E. Jones,
abandoned on the field by the fugitives he had commanded until he was
shot; and Staunton. Hunter occupied the town next day, his two divi-
sions marching unopposed down streets no blue-clad troops had trod
before. Two days later, on June 8, having torn up the railroad west of
town as they approached, Crook and Averell arrived from West
Virginia to assist in the consumption and destruction of commissary and
ordnance stores collected at Staunton for shipment to Lee's army. With
his strength thus doubled to 1 8,000, Hunter promptly took up the march
for Lynchburg, another important depot of supplies, located where
the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad branched east to form the Southside
and the Orange & Alexandria; after which he intended to strike north-
east for Charlottesville, where he would get back astride the Virginia
Central and move down it to join Grant near Richmond, twisting rails
and burning crossties as he went.
Again he was moving toward reinforcements, this time of the
doughtiest kind. Grant had no sooner learned of Hunter's coup at Pied-
mont than he decided to proceed at once with the opening phase of the
plan he had outlined that day for Halleck. He sent for Sheridan
and gave him orders to take off at dawn of June 7, westward around
Lee's north flank, for a link-up with Hunter near Charlottesville; he was
to lend the help of his hard-handed troopers in wrecking the Virginia
Central on his way back and, if necessary, fight off any graybacks,
mounted or dismounted, who might try to interfere. In this connection
Grant conferred next day with Meade, explaining the ticklish necessity
of keeping enough pressure on Lee to discourage him from sending any
part of his army against Sheridan or Hunter, yet not so much pressure
that Lee would fall back to the permanent fortifications in his rear, whose
strength might also permit such a detachment of troops for the protec-
tion of the vital rail supply route from the Shenandoah Valley. (This
The Forty Days [ 303 ]
was also why Grant, in addition to his habitual disinclination in such
matters, had not wanted to risk encouraging his opponent by making a
forthright request for permission to bury his dead and bring in the
wounded suffering in his front.) At the same time, Meade was instructed
to start work on a second line of intrenchments, just in rear of his present
works, stout enough to be held by a skeleton force if Lee attacked while
the army was in the early stages of its withdrawal across the Chicka-
hominy, down beyond White Oak Swamp, to and across the James.
One thing more Grant did while Sheridan was preparing to take
off next morning, and that was to call in two of his aides, Horace Porter
and another young lieutenant colonel, Cyrus Comstock, who was also
a West Pointer and a trained engineer. Both were familiar with the
region to be traversed, having served under McClellan in the course of
that general's "change of base" two years ago, and Grant had a double
mission for them: one as carriers of instructions for Butler at Bermuda
Hundred, the other as selectors of a site for what promised to be the
longest pontoon bridge in American military history. "Explain the con-
templated movement fully to General Butler," he told them, "and see
that the necessary precautions are made by him to render his position
secure against any attack from Lee's forces while the Army of the
Potomac is making its movement." That was their first assignment, and
the second, involving engineering skill, followed close behind. "You
will then select the best point on the river for the crossing."
They left, and the following day — with Sheridan's troopers gone
before dawn, the burial squads at their grisly task out front, and Meade
in a snit over Crapsey's piece in the Inquirer — Grant got to work, while
awaiting the outcome of his preliminary arrangements, on logistic details
of the projected shift. He did so, however, over the continuing objec-
tions of the chief of staff. Halleck had been against a southside campaign
two years ago, when McClellan pled so fervently for permission to
undertake what Grant was about to do, and he still was as much opposed
as ever, believing that such a maneuver was practically an invitation for
Lee to cross the Potomac. The old fox had already crossed it twice with-
out success, it was true, but the third time might prove to be the charm
that won him Washington, especially now that Grant, having stripped
its forts of soldiers, proposed to leave it strategically uncovered.
Old Brains continued thus to take counsel of his fears; but not Grant,
whose mind was quite made up. "We can defend Washington best,"
he informed Halleck, putting an end to discussion of the matter, "by
keeping Lee so occupied that he cannot detach enough troops to capture
it. I shall prepare at once to move across James River."
Grant being Grant, and Halleck having long since lost the veto,
that was that. The Union commander was soon to find, however, that
his effort to keep Lee so occupied with the close-up defense of Rich-
[304] THE CIVIL WAR3P-1864
mond that he would not feel able to send any considerable part of his
outnumbered force against Hunter or Sheridan had failed. Learning on
June 6 of Jones's defeat at Piedmont and Hunter's rapid occupation of
Staunton, Lee sent at once for Breckinridge and informed him that he
and his two brigades would be leaving next morning for Lynchburg to
prevent the capture of that important railroad junction by the bluecoats
they had whipped three weeks ago under Sigel, a hundred miles to the
north. Instructed to combine his 2100 veterans with the Piedmont fugi-
tives for this purpose, the Kentuckian left on schedule, determined to
repeat his- New Market triumph, although he would be facing longer
odds and was personally in a near-invalid condition as a result of having
his horse collapse on him four days ago.
With Grant likely to resume his hammering at any moment, here
at Cold Harbor or elsewhere along a semicircular arc from Atlee Station
down to Chaffin's Bluff — all within ten miles of Capitol Square — even
so minor a reduction in strength as this detachment of two brigades was
a risky business for Lee, no matter how urgent the need. Yet before the
day was over he was warned of another threat which called for a second
detachment, larger and more critical than the first. Sheridan, he learned
from outpost scouts, had taken off before dawn with two of his divisions,
about the same time Breckinridge left Richmond, headed west by rail
for Lynchburg. The bandy-legged cavalryman's march was north,
across the Pamunkey; he made camp that night on the near bank of the
Mattaponi, and next morning — June 8 — he was reported moving west.
Lee reasoned that the blue horsemen intended to effect a junction with
Hunter on this or the far side of the Blue Ridge, somewhere along the
Virginia Central, which they would obstruct while waiting for him to
join them for the return march. If Sheridan was to be thwarted it would
have to be done by a force as mobile as his own, and though Lee found
it hard to deprive himself of a single trooper at a time when his ad-
versary was no doubt contemplating another sidle, he sent Hampton
orders to set out next morning, with his own and Fitzhugh Lee's divi-
sions, to intercept the raiders before they reached either Hunter or the
railroad.
Yet this too, as it turned out, was a day that brought unwelcome
news of the need for still another reduction of the outnumbered army in
its trenches near Cold Harbor. Crook and Averell, Lee was informed,
had joined Hunter that morning in Staunton, doubling his strength
beyond anything Breckinridge, with less than a third as many troops —
including the Piedmont fugitives, once he managed to round them up
— could be expected to confront, much less defeat. Obviously he would
have to be reinforced; but how? Then came the notion Halleck was even
now warning Grant that his proposed maneuver would invite from Lee,
who had a way of making a virtue of necessity. Hunter's strength was
The Forty Days [ 305 ]
put at 20,000, and it was clear that if he was to be stopped it would have
to be done by two or three divisions, available only — if at all — from
the Confederate main body. Such a decrease in the force confronting
Grant, merely for the sake of blocking Hunter, seemed little short of
suicidal. But how would it be if a sizeable detachment could be used
offensively, as a means not only of reclaiming the Shenandoah Valley
and covering the supply lines leading to it, but also of threatening Wash-
ington by crossing the Potomac? Twice before, a dispersion of force,
made in the face of odds as long or longer, had relieved the pressure on
Richmond by playing on the fears of the Union high command. Mc-
Clellan and Hooker had been recalled to protect the menaced capital
in their rear; so might Grant be summoned back to meet a similar threat.
Impossible though it seemed at this fitful juncture, such a maneuver
was never really out of Lee's mind, and it was especially attractive now
that rumors had begun to fly that Grant was designing a shift to the
James, perhaps for a link-up with Butler on the other side. "If he gets
there it will become a siege," Lee had told Early the week before, "and
then it will be a mere question of time."
Hampton had no sooner taken of! next morning, riding the chord
of Sheridan's arc to intercept him, than an alarm from beyond the James
lent credence to the rumor that the Federals were preparing a new
effort in that direction, or in any case an improved resumption of the old
one. Butler, crossing a portion of his command from Bermuda Neck
by a pontoon bridge he had thrown across the Appomattox near Port
Walthall, launched a dawn attack on the Petersburg intrenchments,
four miles south. Beauregard, down to fewer than 8000 troops by now,
managed to contain and repulse this cavalry-infantry assault because of
the strength of the works and the valiance of the men who occupied
them, mostly under- and over-aged members of a militia battalion, rein-
forced for the crisis by volunteers from the city hospital and the county
jail. In the resultant "Battle of the Patients and the Penitents," as it came
to be called, these inexperienced defenders — inspired by a local Negro
band whose vigorous playing gave the attackers the impression that the
works were heavily manned — held their own long enough for gray-
jacket cavalry to arrive from the main line, beyond the Appomattox, and
drive the bluecoats off. It was over by midafternoon, a near thing at best,
and Beauregard, though proud of what had been achieved, warned that
he could not be expected to repeat the performance unless the troops
he had sent Lee were restored to him. Moreover, he told the War De-
partment, they had better be returned at once, since in his opinion to-
day's attack presaged a much larger one soon to come.
"This movement must be a reconnaissance connected with Grant's
future operations," he wired Bragg while the fight was still in progress,
and presently he added, by way of emphasizing the risk: "Without the
[ 3©6 ] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
troops sent to General Lee I will have to elect between abandoning
lines on Bermuda Neck and those of Petersburg. Please give me the
views of the Government on the subject."
Presented thus with a choice between losing Richmond to assault
or by starvation, Bragg could only reply that the mercurial Creole was
to do what he could to hold both positions, while he himself conferred
with Davis, who authorized the return of Grade's brigade from the
capital defenses, and with Lee, who agreed to alert Hoke's division for
a crossing at Drewry's in case another southside attack developed.
Mainly, though, the Virginian saw this abortive maneuver of Butler's
as a feint, designed to distract his attention from more serious threats
presented by more dependable Union commanders on the north side of
the James: by Meade, who might even now be bracing his army for
another all-out lunge, here at Cold Harbor or elsewhere along the
Richmond-hugging arc: by Hunter, who was evidently about to re-
sume his march from Staunton, with either Lynchburg or Charlottesville
as his intermediate goal, preparatory to a combination with Meade: or
by Sheridan, who was in motion between the other two, probably with
the intention of descending on the Virginia Central before linking up
with Hunter for a return march that would complete the destruction
of that vital supply line. Despite a rather superfluous warning from the
President, who added his voice to Bragg's — "The indications are that
Grant, despairing of a direct attack, is now seeking to embarrass you by
flank movements" — Lee could not see that the thing to do, at this
critical juncture, was weaken his army below the present danger
point for the sake of relieving Beauregard's fears as to what Butler
might or might not be up to, down on the far side of the James. Until
Grant's intentions became clearer, and until he could see what came of
the two detachments already made — Breckinridge, two days ago, and
Hampton just this morning — Lee preferred to hold what he had, and
hope that others, elsewhere, would measure up to his expectations.
Wade Hampton, whose assignment to lead the two-division column
in pursuit of Sheridan was the nearest Lee had come to designating a
successor to the fallen Stuart, was intent on fulfilling his share of the
army commander's hopes, not so much because of a desire for fame or an
ache for glory — "I pray for peace," he would presently say in a letter
to his sister, having won the coveted post by demonstrating his fitness
for it in the current operation; "I would not give peace for all the mili-
tary glory of Bonaparte" — as because of a habitual determination to
accomplish what was required of him, in this as in other phases of a life
of privileged responsibility. He wore no plume, no red-lined cape, and a
minimum of braid, preferring a flat-brimmed brown felt hat and a plain
gray jacket of civilian cut. His manner, while friendly, was grave, and
though he was perhaps the richest man in the South, his spurs were brass,
not gold. A Virginia trooper noted another difference between the Caro-
The Forty Days [ 307 ]
linian and his predecessor as chief of cavalry, which was that, whereas
Jeb had "sometimes seemed to have a delight in trying to discharge his
mission with the smallest possible number of men, Hampton believed in
superiority of force and exerted himself to concentrate all the men he
could at the point of contact."
Superiority of force would not be possible short of the point of
contact in this case; for though both mounted columns were composed
of two divisions containing a total of five brigades, Sheridan had 8000
troopers, compared to Hampton's 5000, and four batteries of horse
artillery opposing three. One advantage the gray riders had, however,
and this was that they traveled lighter, with fewer impediments to slow
them down. The Federals had a train of 125 supply wagons and ambu-
lances, as well as a herd of beef to butcher on the march, while all the
Confederates had was an issue of three-day rations, consisting of half
a pound of bacon and a pound and a half of hardtack, carried on the
person, along with a sack of horse corn slung from the pommel of each
saddle. Another advantage, although no one could be sure of it before-
hand, was that Lee had been right about Sheridan's objective; Hampton
had a much shorter distance to travel, northwest from Atlee, across the
South Anna, in order to get there first. This he did, despite the blue
column's two-day head start in setting out on its roundabout route from
Cold Harbor, first north across the Pamunkey, then west through Chiles-
burg, up the left bank of the North Anna for a crossing short of
Gordonsville and a quick descent, as ordered, on the Virginia Central
between that place and Louisa Courthouse, a dozen miles down the
track. Shortly after sunrise, June 11, within about three miles of his
objective at the outset of his fifth day on the go, Sheridan ran into fire
from rebel skirmishers, who, he now found, had arrived the previous
evening and had rested from their two-day ride within earshot of the
bugles that called his troopers to horse this morning.
Hampton was not only there, he was attacking in accordance with
plans made the night before, after learning that he had won the race for
the stretch of railroad Sheridan had in mind to wreck. His own
division, with three brigades, was to advance northeast from Trevilian
Station, eight miles short of Gordonsville and half that distance above
Louisa, where Fitz Lee, having bivouacked his two brigades nearby,
was to set out north at daybreak for a convergence upon Sheridan's
camp, five miles away. Each division had a convenient road to move
on, and Hampton at least was unhindered on the approach march.
Hearing firing off to the east, which he took to be Fitz brushing pickets
from his path, he sent his lead brigade forward, dismounted, and made
contact with the Federals, driving them rapidly back on their supports,
who resisted stubbornly even when hit by a second brigade. Hampton
withheld full commitment, waiting for Lee to come up and strike the
defenders flank and rear. At this point, however, a sudden clatter from
[ 3o8 ] THE CIVIL WAR3®" 1864
the south informed him that his own rear had been struck. By what, and
how, he did not wait to learn. Disengaging with all possible speed, and
pursued now by the enemy he had driven, he withdrew to find a host
of blue marauders laying claim to his headquarters and the 800 horses
left behind when he dismounted his lead brigade for the sunrise attack.
He attacked again, this time rearward, and what had been a battle be-
came a melee.
The marauders were members of Custer's brigade, one of Tor-
bert's three. While the other two were holding fast under pressure from
Hampton, Gregg's division had got the jump on Fitz and driven him
back toward Louisa, enabling the Michiganders to slip between the
converging gray columns for a penetration deep into Hampton's rear,
near Trevilian. Yet they had no sooner begun to gather the fruits of
their boldness — the 800 riderless horses, several ordnance wagons, and
a couple of guns being held there in reserve — than they were hit,
simultaneously from the north and east, by three hornet-mad rebel
brigades, two of them Hampton's and one Lee's. Custer not only had to
abandon what he had won; he also lost much that he brought with him,
including a considerable number of troopers shot or captured, his head-
quarters wagon containing all his records and spare clothes, and his
Negro cook Eliza, known to the soldiers as "the Queen of Sheba"
because she usually rode in a dilapidated family carriage the yellow-
haired general had commandeered for her professional use and comfort.
Shaken, he fell back to the station and held on grimly against the odds,
while Torbert fought his way down with the other two brigades and
Gregg continued to slug it out with Fitz. The result was about as be-
wildering to one side as to the other, and was to be even more confusing
to future students attempting to reconcile conflicting reports of the
action. The Confederates at last pulled back, Hampton toward Gordons-
ville and Lee in the opposite direction. Sheridan did not pursue, west
or east, but contented himself with holding the four miles of track be-
tween Trevilian and Louisa. It was a gloomy night for the Federals,
especially those in Custer's brigade, which had lost heavily today; but
their dejection was relieved, just before sunup, by the reappearance of
the Queen of Sheba, grinning broadly and lugging along the gaudy
young general's personal valise, which she had managed to bring with
her when she stole out of the rebel lines and into her own.
Sheridan was far from pleased with the development of events.
After a night of fitful sleep, with graybacks hovering east and west —
about to be joined, for all he knew, by reinforcements from both
directions, infantry by rail and cavalry on horseback — he put Gregg
to work with sledges and crowbars on the four-mile stretch of track
and prepared to enlarge his present limits of destruction, first by driving
Hampton back on Gordonsville, eight miles northwest, and then by
thrusting him aside to clear the way for the scheduled meeting with
The Forty Days [ 309 ]
Hunter, another twenty miles up the line at Charlottesville. It was
past noon, however, before he got Torbert deployed for action; by
which time Fitz Lee had joined Hampton, coming roundabout from
Louisa, and the two divisions were dug in just above Trevilian, block-
ing both the Virginia Central and the turnpike leading west. Repeated
and costly dismounted assaults failed to budge the rebels, snug in their
works, and after nightfall, Gregg having done all the damage he could
to the railroad within the cramped limits of the Federal occupation,
Sheridan decided to abandon both his position and his mission.
Under cover of darkness he withdrew across the North Anna and
took up the return march, retracing the route that had brought him to
the unhappy confrontation at Trevilian. He pulled back, he said, be-
cause his supplies and munitions were low and there was no word from
Hunter, either at Charlottesville or elsewhere, as to their intended com-
bination. In any case, having spent four days on the march out, he took
nine to make it back to White House Landing, his ambulances over-
loaded with wounded and his horses distressed at being reduced to a
diet of bearded wheat. Meantime, the limited damage Gregg had done
the railroad was repaired so promptly by work gangs that Virginia
Central trains were back on schedule before Sheridan reached the
Pamunkey and recrossed it under the protection of gunboats whose
heavy-caliber frown kept the still-hovering butternut cavalry at bay.
Hampton had lost nearly 1100 men in the course of the raid; Sheridan
reckoned his own loss at about 800, though a more accurate revision put
the figure at 15 16, considerably better than twice the number he had
lost on the Richmond raid the month before.
R. E. Lee of course was pleased to learn that Little Phil had been
disposed of as a threat to his main supply route from the Shenandoah
Valley: so pleased, indeed, that he at last named Hampton, rather than
his nephew Fitz, as his new chief of cavalry. But word of Sheridan's
repulse came in the wake of news of a fateful development, out beyond
the Blue Ridge, which not only presented a more substantial menace
to the newly delivered supply line, but also served notice that, even if
the railroad escaped seizure, there would be little in the way of supplies
available for shipment from the region, either to Richmond or to any
other point in the shrinking Confederacy. The news was that David
Hunter, his strength doubled by the arrival of Crook two days before,
had resumed his march up the Valley on June 10. Leaving Breckinridge
holding the bag at Rockflsh Gap, where the Virginia Central passed
through the mountains east of Staunton — the Kentuckian had shifted
there from Lynchburg to block the western approach to Charlottesville,
which he thought was next on the Union list — Hunter struck out
south, not east, and by noon of the day the cavalry battle opened near
Trevilian Station, eighty air-line miles away, reached Lexington and
took under fire, from across North River, the crenelated turrets and
[ 310] THE CIVIL WAR»"1864
ramparts of V.M.I., whose cadets had shared in the defeat of his
predecessor four weeks ago. Marching in, flags flying, he completed his
work of destruction, next day and the day after, by putting the torch to
what was left of the Institute and turning his soldiers loose on the town
to plunder a number of private homes and the library of Washington
College. For good measure, after a visit to Stonewall Jackson's grave —
perhaps to make certain the famed rebel had not come bursting out of it
in his wrath — Hunter ordered the residence of Former Governor John
Letcher burned, as he later reported, in retaliation for its absent owner's
having issued "a violent and inflammatory proclamation . . . inciting the
population of the country to rise and wage guerrilla warfare on my
troops."
Such hard-handedness toward civilians was remindful of John
Pope, of whom Lee had said: "He ought to be suppressed," and then
had proceeded to do just that by dividing his army, confronted near
Richmond by a superior force, and sending part of it north and west,
under the one-time V.M.I, professor now buried in outraged Lexington,
against the fire-breathing secondary invader attempting a descent on his
left flank and rear. Close though the resemblance was between the
situations then and now, there were also differences, none of them ad-
vantageous from the Confederate point of view. One was that Jackson,
Lee's right arm, was no longer available to carry out the suppression,
and another was the present depleted condition of the Army of North-
ern Virginia, which had lost in the past forty days a solid forty percent
of the strength it had enjoyed at the beginning of the campaign. Its
casualties totaled about 27,000, and though it had inflicted a precisely
tabulated 54,929 — a number greater than all its original infantry and
artillery combined — the forty percent figure, unlike Grant's forty-
five percent, applied at the higher levels of rank as well as at the lower.
Of the 58 general officers in command of troops on the eve of conflict, back
in early May, no less than 23 had fallen in battle, eight of them killed,
thirteen gravely wounded, and two captured. Nor was the distribution
of these casualties, high and low, by any means even throughout the
three corps. Hardest hit of all was the Second: just the one Lee had
in mind to detach, since it contained, as a nucleus, the survivors of
Jackson's old Army of the Valley and was therefore more familiar than
the others with the region Hunter was laying waste. Not only had the
corps commander been replaced, but so had the leaders of two of the
three divisions, while of the twelve original brigade commanders only
one remained at his post, two having been promoted and the other nine
shot or captured. At Spotsylvania the corps had lost the equivalent of a
full division, and this contributed largely to the reduction, by half, of
its outset strength of just over 17,000. There now were barely 8000
infantry in its ranks, distributed through three divisions with only three
brigades in each, all but one under leaders new to their responsibilities.
The Forty Days [311]
These were drawbacks not to be ignored in reaching a decision;
but neither was the need for dealing promptly with Hunter to be passed
over. From his current position at Lexington he would no doubt cross
the Blue Ridge, marching southeast against Lynchburg or northeast
against Charlottesville. One would be about as bad as the other, so far
as Richmond was concerned, and there was also the possibility that the
wide-ranging Hunter might move against them both, in that order. At
Lynchburg, just under a hundred miles due west of the captial, he
would be in a position to wreck not only the Southside Railroad but
also the James River Canal, both vital to the subsistence of Richmond's
citizens and its armies, while at Charlottesville he would be back astride
the Virginia Central, which he would destroy, with or without Sheri-
dan's help, on the march to join Grant or come down on Lee's flank.
Reduced to those terms, the problem solved itself, insofar at least as
they applied to reaching a decision. Like Pope, Hunter would have to
be "suppressed," or anyhow stopped and, if possible, driven back. Lee's
mind was quite made up. Moreover, there was the persuasive chance
that in moving against the despoilers of Lexington he would be killing
two birds with one stone. If, after disposing of the bluecoats out in
the Valley, the gray column then moved down it, to and across the
Potomac to threaten Washington from the rear, still larger benefits might
accrue. There was small chance, at this late stage, that Grant's whole
force would be recalled — as McClellan's had been — from the gates
of Richmond, but it was altogether possible that he would be required
to detach part of it for the closeup defense of his capital; or else, in
desperation to avoid that, he might be provoked into launching another
ill-considered Cold Harbor assault, there or elsewhere, in an attempt to
settle the issue overnight. In either event, Lee reasoned, his adversary
would be reduced enough for the Army of Northern Virginia to
launch an all-out assault of its own: hopefully one that would be as pro-
ductive as the Seven Days offensive, but in any case one that would be
conducted with all the fighting skill his soldiers had acquired in their
many victories since that grim beginning under his command.
His decision reached — June 12, a Sunday; the horseback fight
was into its second day at Trevilian Station, and Hunter was putting
the torch to Governor Letcher's house in Lexington — Lee sent for
Jubal Early to talk over with him the nature of his mission. Tall de-
spite an arthritic stoop, a bachelor at forty-seven, dour of face, with a
scraggly beard and a habit of profanity, this fellow Virginian and West
Pointer was admittedly no Stonewall; but who was? No other corps
commander since the fall of Longstreet had done any better on the
offensive, and though this was surely the faintest of praise — since,
conversely, it could also be said that none had done any worse — the
only really black mark against him was his failure, in conjunction with
Ewell on the second day in the Wilderness, to take prompt advantage
[ 312 ] THE CIVIL WAR3T1864
of Gordon's report that Sedgwick's flank was open to attack. No such
opportunities must be missed if he was to succeed against the odds that
lay before him, first in the Valley and then beyond the Potomac. Tactful
as always, Lee made this clear in giving Early verbal instructions for
setting out next morning, before daylight, with all three of his divi-
sions and two battalions of artillery. Following as it did the detachment
of Breckinridge, with whom he would combine to cover Charlottesville
and Lynchburg, Early's departure would deprive Lee of nearly a fourth
of his infantry; yet, even with the inclusion of the Piedmont fugitives,
the gray force would not be up to Hunter's present strength. Victory
would have to be won by superior generalship, by celerity, stealth, and
an absolute dedication to the offensive: in short, by the application of
principles dear to the commander of the erstwhile Army of the Valley,
which was now to be resurrected under Early.
In written orders, sent that night while the Second Corps veterans
were preparing feverishly and happily to be gone with the dawn,
these hopes were repeated, together with specific instructions for the
march. It would be northwest, like Hampton's four days earlier, for a
link-up with Breckinridge near Rockfish Gap and a quick descent on
Hunter before he reached Lynchburg. After that, if all went well,
would come the northward march against a new old adversary,
Abraham Lincoln — and, through Lincoln and his fears, against U. S.
Grant, who presumably would still be knocking at the gates of Rich-
mond, a hundred miles away.
Grant might still be knocking when the time came, but if so it
would be at the back gate, not the front. Under cover of the darkness
that would obscure Early's departure, north and west, the Army of
the Potomac had begun its withdrawal, east and south, from its works
around Cold Harbor for the crossing of the James. Moreover, if all
went as intended, here and elsewhere, the issue would have been
settled — so far, as least, as Richmond was concerned — well before
any rebel detachment, of whatever size, had time to reach the Potomac,
much less cross it to threaten Washington. With Sheridan astride the
Virginia Central and Hunter about to wreck both the Southside Railroad
and the James River Canal at Lynchburg (Grant did not know that
Sheridan was being driven off that evening, any more than he knew that
Lee was sending Early next morning to do the same to Hunter) Federal
seizure of the Petersburg rail hub would cut all but one of the gray
capital's major supply lines, the Richmond & Danville, which had only
been extended down to Greensboro, North Carolina, the month before.
No single route, let alone one as limited as this, could supply the city's
needs, including subsistence for its defenders; Lee, more than ever,
would be obliged to evacuate his capital or come out from behind his
intrenchments for a fight in the open, and Grant did not believe that
The Forty Days [ 3 1 3 ]
the Confederacy could survive what would follow the adoption of
either course.
He had bided his time, anticipating solutions, and when they came
he moved swiftly. When the two aides, Porter and Comstock, returned
from their reconnaissance that Sunday morning to report that they had
found a good site for the pontoon bridge across the James, ten miles
downriver from City Point and just beyond Charles City Courthouse,
he evidenced some measure of the strain he had been under this past
week. "While listening to our report," Porter would recall, "Grant
showed the only nervousness he ever manifested in my presence. After
smoking his cigar vigorously for some minutes, he removed it from his
mouth, put it on the table, and allowed it to go out; then relighted it,
gave a few puffs, and laid it aside again. We could hardly get the words
out of our mouths fast enough to suit him, and the numerous questions
he asked were uttered with much greater rapidity than usual." This
was a different Grant from the stolid, twig-whittling commander of the
past six weeks. It was, as the next few days would show, the Grant of
the Vicksburg campaign, fast on the march, sudden in striking, and
above all quick to improvise amid rapidly developing events. "At the
close of the interview," Porter wrote, still amazed years later at the
transformation in his chief, "he informed us that he would begin the
movement that night."
It began, in point of fact, that afternoon, when Grant and Meade
and their two staffs proceeded down the north bank of the Chicka-
hominy, past Dispatch Station on the defunct York River Railroad, to
make camp for the night beside a clump of catalpa trees in the yard
of a farmhouse near Long Bridge, where two of the five corps were to
cross the river, ten miles downstream from the present Union left. The
bridge was out, but Wilson's cavalry splashed across the shallows, just
after sundown, and got to work throwing a pontoon span to be used
by Warren, who began his march in the twilight and was over the river
by midnight. Hancock and Wright meantime fell back to the newly dug
second line, under orders to hold it at all costs, in case Lee got wind of
the withdrawal and launched a night attack. Smith and Burnside
simultaneously marched rearward from their positions on the right, the
latter turning south beyond the railroad for a crossing of the Chicka-
hominy at Jones Bridge, five miles below Long Bridge, and Smith con-
tinuing east to White House Landing, where transports were waiting to
give his troops a fast, restful trip down the York and up the James to
Bermuda Hundred. Satisfied that Lee had no overnight interference in
mind, Hancock and Wright pulled out after midnight to follow Warren
and Burnside, respectively, over Long and Jones bridges. Once across,
three of the four corps would march hard for Charles City and the
James, but Warren was instructed to turn west and take up a defensive
position near Riddell's Shop in support of Wilson's troopers, who would
[314]
THE CIVIL WAR
1864
1*— .
Early departs)^ U V— ^"^.,
daylight i3June^ i^V VN *"*
Jikhmond
Smith embarks,
daylight 13 June
White House
SMITH Q
„ Miles ^
patrol the region between White
Oak Swamp and Malvern Hill
in case Lee, having missed his
chance tonight, tried to strike
tomorrow at the blue army in
motion across his front. Like
Wright and Hancock earlier,
once he was convinced that Lee
had been outfoxed, Warren
would take up the march for
Charles City and the crossing of
the James.
Intricate as these various
interdependent movements were,
they had been worked out in
accordance with the required
logistics of allotted time and road
space. All went smoothly. Despite the heat of the night and the choking
dust stirred up by more than a hundred thousand pairs of shoes, the men
stepped out smartly in the darkness, glad to be leaving a dismal field
where they had buried so many comrades after so much purposeless
suffering. Occupied as they had been with improving their intrench-
ments, right up to the hour they got orders to withdraw, they took it as
an excellent sign that their departure had been preceded by no rumor
that a shift was being considered, since what came as a surprise to them
was likely to be even more of one to the johnnies across the way, includ-
ing Old Man Lee. "It was not now the custom," one veteran observed
approvingly, "to inform the rank and file, and the newspapers and the
enemy, of intended movements." He and others like him in those several
widespread dusty columns could remember another nighttime with-
drawal from that same field, just two weeks short of two full years ago,
and though Cold Harbor was in itself an even more horrendous experi-
ence than Gaines Mill, the feeling now was different, and altogether
better. Now as then the march was south, away from the scene of a de-
feat; but they felt now — as they had not done then, while trudging
some of these same James-bound roads — that they were moving toward
a victory, even Victory itself.
Grant thought so, too, and on sounder ground, knowing, as they
did not, what he had devised for the undoing of the rebels on the far
side of the river. Smith, whose corps was familiar with the terrain down
there, would arrive first, being steam-propelled, and after going ashore
at Bermuda Hundred would repeat the maneuver Butler had rehearsed
four days ago, across the Appomattox, when his Petersburg reconnais-
sance-in-strength was stalled by green militia, convicts, convalescents,
and Negro bandsmen. That was not likely to happen this time, for
The Forty Days [ 315 ]
three reasons. One was that Baldy would be in charge of the advance,
not the nonprofessional Butler, and Grant had already explained to his
fellow West Pointer the importance of striking hard and fast. Another
was that this attack would not only be made in much greater strength
than the other, but would also be launched with the advantage of know-
ing the layout of the Petersburg defenses. The third reason was that, if
there was any delay in the quick reduction of the place, Hancock —
whose three divisions, in the lead on the march from Cold Harbor,
would be ferried across the James to save time while the 2100-foot pon-
toon bridge was being assembled — would soon be down to add the
weight of the hardest-hitting corps in Meade's army to the pressure
Smith was exerting. As for the others, Burnside, Warren, and Wright
would be arriving in that order behind Hancock and could be used as
then seemed best: probably for a breakout westward from Bermuda
Neck, dislodging Beauregard's cork, and a turning movement against
Drewry's Bluff, which would block the path of any reinforcements Lee
might try to send to Petersburg when he found what Grant had been
up to all this time.
Members of the two staffs — Grant's and Meade's — shared the
sanguine expectations of their chiefs, at least to the extent that they
were privy to the plan, and their confidence grew as the day wore on
and they rode south, doubling the columns of guns and men on the dusty
roads. All the signs were that the army had indeed stolen a march on
Lee, whose cavalry, unable to penetrate Wilson's screen below the
Chickahominy, could give him no inkling of what was in progress east
of Riddell's Shop, near which Warren's four divisions remained in
position without firing a shot all afternoon, so effectively did the blue
troopers perform, and then resumed their roundabout hike for the James.
By that time the head of Hancock's column had come within sight of
the broad, shining river, its choppy little waves as bright as polished
hatchets in the sunlight.
Transports and gunboats were riding at anchor, all with steam up
for the crossing, and army engineers were at work assembling their
pontoons for the nearly half-mile span by which the other three corps
would cross, tomorrow and the next day. An officer on Meade's staff
observed Hancock's troops slogging down to Wilcox Landing just be-
fore sunset, hot and tired from their thirty-mile overnight march, their
faded, sweat-splotched uniforms in tatters from forty days of combat,
and was struck by the thought that, so far as these hard-bitten veterans
were concerned, "the more they serve, the less they look like soldiers
and the more they resemble day laborers who have bought second-hand
military clothes." Then he watched them react with suspicion and
puzzled dislike, much as he himself had done earlier, to their first sight
of the neatly turned-out sailors and the engineers in uniforms of dark
unweathered blue, until at last they saw, as he had seen, what it was
[316] THE CIVIL WAR»"1864
that was so wrong about these strangers. They were clean — clean as
visitors from some dirtless planet — and Grant's men, after six weeks
on the go, shooting and being shot at, with neither the water nor the
time for bathing, had become mistrustful of anyone not as grimy as
themselves.
Yet despite the grime and the suspicion that went with it, despite
the added weariness and the fret that over the past six weeks they had
suffered three separate 1 8,ooo-man subtractions from their ranks —
first in the Wilderness, then at Spotsylvania, and last on the North
Anna, Totopotomoy Creek, and the Chickahominy — their spirits were
even higher near the end of the Jamesward trek than at the outset: not
only from being on the move again, away from the stench and snipers
at Cold Harbor, but also because they could see what had begun to
come of this latest sidle. Though they knew nothing of what lay ahead,
on the far side of the shining river, they trusted Grant to make the
most of the fact that they had given Lee the slip the night before and
stolen a march on him today.
They had indeed done both those things, and were now in a
position to do more. The first Lee had known of their departure was at
sunup — two hours after Early withdrew his three divisions and set
out for the Shenandoah Valley — when messengers reached head-
quarters, back near Gaines Mill, with reports that the Yankees were
gone from their works around Cold Harbor. Advancing scouts un-
covered a second line of intrenchments, newly dug and intricately
fashioned as if for permanent occupation, but these too were deserted,
as were the woods and fields a mile and more beyond. June 13, which
was to have been the fortieth day of contact for the two armies, turned
out to be a day of practically no contact at all; Grant was gone, vanished
with his blue-clad throng, perhaps toward the lower stretches of the
Chickahominy, more likely to a new base on the James from which to
mount a new advance on Richmond, either by crossing the river for a
back-door attack or else by moving up its near bank for an all-out
assault on the capital fortifications.
Whichever it was, Lee warned the government of this latest threat
and moved to meet it, shifting south to put what was left of his army in
position below White Oak Swamp, where he would block the eastern
approaches to the city and also be closer to Drewry's for a crossing in
case the blow was aimed at Beauregard. While his son's two thin-
spread cavalry brigades — all that were left since Hampton and Fitz Lee
took out after Sheridan four days ago — probed unsuccessfully at rapid-
firing masses of Federal horsemen coming down the Long Bridge Road
toward Riddell's Shop, he posted Hill's corps in their support, athwart
the field of the Seven Days fight at Glendale, and Anderson's off to the
right, reaching down to Malvern Hill, which the cavalry then occupied
as a post of observation, although nothing of much interest could be
The Forty Days [ 3 1 7 ]
seen from there except a good deal of apparently purposeless activity by
Union gunboats at Deep Bottom, down below. Lee's ranks were so
gravely thinned by Early's departure that he might have been expected
to recall him while there still was time; but when the President inquired
that afternoon whether this might not be the wisest course, Lee replied,
rather laconically, that he did not think so. At the end of the Forty Days,
as at the beginning, he remained the gambler he had always been, the
believer that the weaker force must take the longer chances.
"I do not know that the necessity for his presence today is greater
than it was yesterday," he said of Early. "His troops would make us
more secure here, but success in the Valley would relieve our difficulties
that at present press heavily upon us."
Those first four words, "I do not know," were the crux of the
matter. All the prisoners taken so far today had been cavalry, which left
him with nothing but guesses as to the whereabouts of the Union in-
fantry and artillery, all hundred thousand of them. Most likely they
were in motion for the James, but whether Grant intended for them to
cross it or advance up the north bank Lee could not tell; nor could he
act, for fear of being decoyed out of position, until he secured more or
less definite information as to which course his adversary had taken or
would take. Either way, the defense of Richmond had come down to a
siege, the thing he had tried hardest to avoid. "This army cannot stand
a siege," he had told Little Powell a month ago, just as Beauregard, one
week later, had warned Bragg: "The picture presented is one of ultimate
starvation."
Red Clay Minuet
* x *
AIR-LINE, THE HUNDRED-MILE DISTANCE
from Chattanooga to Atlanta was the same as that from Washington to
Richmond, and so were the respective sizes of the armies, which in each
paired case gave the Union commander a roughly two-to-one numerical
advantage. But there for the most part the resemblance stopped. Meade
and Sherman (or for that matter Grant and Sherman, since that was what
it came to) were as different from each other as were Lee and Johnston,
two very different men indeed, and so too — despite the fact that down
in Georgia, as in Virginia, the rivers mainly ran athwart the projected
lines of advance and retreat — was the terrain, flat or gently rolling in
the East, but mountainous in the West and therefore eminently de-
fensible, at any rate in theory, although few of the place-names strewn
about the map had been connected with much bloodshed since the era
when settlers ousted the aborigines. In point of fact, harking back to
those massacre days, Sherman had something similar in mind for the
Confederates to his front, military and civilian. "If the North design
to conquer the South," he had written home two years ago, "we must
begin at Kentucky and reconquer the country from there as we did
from the Indians."
Now that he faced completion of that massive undertaking, he
was in what he liked to call "high feather." Instructed by Grant "to
move against Johnston's army, break it up, and get into the interior of
the enemy's country as far as you can, inflicting all the damage you can
against their war resources," the red-haired Ohioan, by way of showing
how well he understood his task, replied in paraphrase: "I am to knock
Jos. Johnston, and to do as much damage to the resources of the enemy
as possible."
By way of help in carrying out this project he would have an
advantage, a man-made facility available neither to his flintlock-carrying
predecessors nor to his cohorts in the East: namely, a rapid-transit all-
Red Clay Minuet [ 3 19 ]
weather supply line in the form of a railroad, the Western & Atlantic,
running all the way to Atlanta — provided, of course, he could put and
keep it in shape while nudging Johnston backward; for the rebels would
surely wreck it in their wake, and almost as surely would strike at it
with cavalry in his rear as he advanced. With this in mind, he made the
training of rail repair gangs an integral part of his preparations, includ-
ing daily workouts as rigorous and precise as the drill required of gun
crews, and elevated gandy dancers to a combat status as high as that
of riflemen or cannoneers. The same precaution was taken with regard
to the much longer line extending rearward from Chattanooga, up
through Middle Tennessee and across Kentucky to Louisville, his main
supply base on the Ohio. Practically all of this more than three hundred
miles of highly frangible track was subject to strikes by grayback
troopers from adjoining departments, hard-handed horsemen schooled
in destruction by John Morgan and Bedford Forrest, and though Sherman
planned to keep these slashers occupied by making adjunctive trouble
for them in their own back yards, he also hoped to forestall or reduce
the delays that were likely to attend such depredations, in case the
raiders broke out anyhow, by turning Nashville into what an amazed
staff brigadier presently described as "one vast storehouse — ware-
houses covering city blocks, one a quarter of a mile long; stables by the
ten and twenty acres, repair shops by the fieldful." Also of help in re-
ducing the supply problem would be a certain amount of belt-tighten-
ing by the troops, whose divisional trains, in accordance with Sherman's
orders, would carry only "five days' bacon, twenty days' bread, and
thirty days' salt, sugar, and coffee; nothing else but arms and ammuni-
tion." The main thing, as the commanding general saw it, was to keep
moving: and this applied as much to rearward personnel as it did to the
men up front. "I'm going to move on Joe Johnston the day Grant
telegraphs me he is going to hit Bobby Lee," he told a quartermaster
officer. "And if you don't have my army supplied, and keep it supplied,
we'll eat your mules up, sir; eat your mules up!" Having passed before
through un-fought-over regions of the South — recently, for example,
on a march across the midriff of Mississippi, from Vicksburg to Meridian
and back — he was aware of another resource which he did not intend
to neglect. "Georgia has a million of inhabitants," he wrote Grant. "If
they can live, we should not starve."
Thus Sherman; a violent-talking man whose bite at times mea-
sured up to his bark, and whose commitment was to total war. "I be-
lieve in fighting in a double sense," he said this spring, "first to gain
physical results and next to inspire respect on which to build up our
nation's power." Tecumseh or "Cump" to his family, he was Uncle
Billy to his soldiers, one of whom called him "the most American-
looking man I ever saw; tall and lank, not very erect, with hair like
thatch, which he rubs up with his hands, a rusty beard trimmed close,
[ 320] THE CIVIL WAR5T1864
a wrinkled face, sharp, prominent red nose, small, bright eyes, coarse
red hands; black felt hat slouched over the eyes, dirty dickey with the
points wilted down, black old-fashioned stock, brown field officer's
coat with high collar and no shoulder straps, muddy trowsers and one
spur. He carries his hands in his pockets, is very awkward in his gait
and motions, talks continually and with immense rapidity." Such in-
tensity often brought on a reaction in observers, including this one. "At
his departure I felt it a relief, and experienced almost an exhaustion after
the excitement of his vigorous presence."
All this, moreover, was by way of diversion, a spare-time release
of superabundant energy from an organism described by another as-
sociate as "boiling over with ideas, crammed full of feeling, discussing
every subject and pronouncing on all." His main concern for the past
two months, as Grant's western heir, had been how to get at or around
Johnston's army, posted thirty miles southeast of Chattanooga for the
past five months, in occupation of Dalton and the wide, hilly valley of
the Oostanaula, which extended southward forty-odd miles to the Etowah
and southwestward about the same distance to Rome, where the two
rivers combined to form the Coosa. The immediate tactical problem was
Rocky Face Ridge, a steep, knife-edge bastion twenty miles long,
rimming the upper valley on the west to cover Dalton and the rail-
road, which after piercing the ridge at Mill Creek Gap, one third of
the way down, ran south and east for another hundred miles, through
Resaca and Kingston, Allatoona and Marietta, on across the Chattahoo-
chee to Atlanta, Johnston's base and Sherman's goal in the campaign
about to open, here in North Georgia, in conjunction with Meade's
plunge across the Rapidan, six hundred crow-flight miles to the north-
east. Unlike Meade — thanks to Banks, holed up by now in Alexandria
after his defeat at Sabine Crossroads — Sherman would not have the
supposed advantage of diversionary attacks on the enemy flank or rear
by troops from other departments, such as Sigel and Butler had been
told to make. Whatever was going to be accomplished in the way of
driving or maneuvering Johnston from his position along that ridge
would have to be done by the men on hand. And though it was true
that at present the Federals enjoyed a better than two-to-one numerical
advantage (Johnston had just under 45,000 of all arms, with 138 guns,
while Sherman had just over 110,000, with 254) the prospect was any-
thing but pleasing. For one thing — thanks again to Banks, who was in
no position to discourage, let alone interfere with, anything the Con-
federates might take it in mind to do on this side of the Mississippi
River — Johnston had another 19,000 effectives and 50 guns, down in
Alabama under Polk, presumably ready to join him at the first sign of
danger, whereas Sherman could only look forward to receiving about
10,000 due back next month from reenlistment furloughs. That still
would leave him roughly a two-to-one advantage, but this by no means
Red Clay Minuet [321]
assured victory in assailing a position such as the one the rebels occupied,
just ahead on Rocky Face Ridge.
Johnston, while successfully resisting Richmond's efforts to nudge
him forward across the Tennessee, had spent the past four months
preparing to resist the pending Union effort to prod him backward
across the Chattahoochee. His two infantry corps, commanded by
Lieutenant Generals William J. Hardee and John Bell Hood, each with
about 20,000 men, were disposed along the northern half of the ridge,
charged with giving particular attention to defending Mill Creek Gap,
four miles northwest of Dalton, and Dug Gap, a second notch in the
knife edge, five miles south. From the north end of this fortified posi-
tion, Major General Joseph Wheeler's 5000 cavalry extended the line
eastward to give warning in case the Federals tried to descend on Dalton
by rounding the upper end of the ridge for a southward strike down
the Oostanaula valley, where the ground was far less rugged and less
easy to defend.
Sherman had no intention of moving in that direction, however,
since to do so would uncover his base at Chattanooga: which brought
him, regrettably, back to the dilemma of having to challenge the rebs
in their apparently unassailable position, dead ahead on Rocky Face
Ridge, securely intrenched and with high-sited guns ready-laid to blast
the life out of whatever moved against them, in whatever strength. More-
over, as if nature had not done enough for him already, Johnston's
engineers had lengthened the odds against the attackers by clogging the
culverts of the railway ramp on the near side of the ridge, thus convert-
ing Mill Creek into an artificial lake across the rear of the gap that bore
its name. Natives had a grislier designation; Buzzard Roost, they called
the desolate notch through which the railroad wound its way. But
Sherman, when at last he got a look at the rocky, high-walled gorge,
catching glints of sunlight on the guns emplaced for its defense, pro-
nounced it nothing less than "the terrible door of death," a term which
would apply about as well to Dug Gap, just below.
George Thomas, who had felt out the gray defenses back in
February, as a diversion intended to discourage Johnston from sending
reinforcements to Polk while Sherman marched on Meridian, came up
with the suggestion that, while McPherson and Schofleld took over the
position he now held in front of Ringgold, confronting the Rocky Face
intrenchments, he take his four-corps Army of the Cumberland down
the west side of the ridge to its far end, then press on eastward through
unguarded Snake Creek Gap for a descent on the railroad near Resaca,
fifteen miles in Johnston's rear. At best, this would expose the Confeder-
ates to a mauling when they fell back to protect their life line, as they
would be obliged to do; while at worst, even if they somehow managed
to avoid encirclement, it would turn them out of their all-but-impreg-
nable position between Chattanooga and Dalton and thus convert the
[ 322 ] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
present stalemate, which favored the defenders, into a war of maneuver,
which would favor the side with the greater number of troops and
guns. Sherman, though the result his lieutenant promised was all he
hoped for, rejected the proposal for two reasons. Thomas's command,
twice the size of McPherson's and Schofield's combined, comprised a solid
two thirds of the Federal total; secrecy would surely be lost in with-
drawing so large a force and moving it such a distance, first across the
enemy's front, then round his flank — and without secrecy, Sherman
was convinced, it would be dangerous in the extreme to divide his army
in the presence of so wily an adversary as the distinguished Virginian
he faced. That was the first reason. The second was Thomas himself, the
plodding, imperturbable Rock of Chickamauga. His specialty was
staunchness, not celerity, the quality most needed in the movement he
proposed.
But then, having dismissed the project as impractical when ex-
amined from that angle, Sherman shifted his point of view and experi-
enced a surge of joy not unlike that of a poet revising the rejected draft
of a poem he now perceives will become the jewel of his collection.
Celerity, presumed to be lacking in Thomas, was McPherson's hall-
mark, and the size of his command — just under 25,000, as compared
to Thomas's more than 70,000 — seemed about right for the job. More-
over, there would be no need for a withdrawal from the immediate
presence of a vigilant opponent; McPherson's two corps, not yet on line,
could march south from Chattanooga, under cover of Taylor's Ridge,
then swing east through Ship's Gap and Villanow to make a sudden
descent on Resaca, by way of Snake Creek Gap, for the cutting of
Johnston's life line before the Virginian even knew he was threatened
from that direction, his attention having been focused all the while on
Thomas, active in his front, and on Schofleld, who would feint with
his 13,000-man Army of the Ohio against the opposite flank, which lay
in the path of his march down the railroad from Knoxville. Thus
Sherman set the pattern for the campaign about to open in North
Georgia, a pattern that would utilize Thomas's outsized command —
which contained more infantry and cavalry than all of Johnston's army,
including the troops in Alabama under Polk — as the holding force,
fixing the enemy in place, while McPherson and Schofleld probed or
rounded his flank or flanks to prise or chevy him out of position and
expose him to being assailed on the march, or in any case to being
struck before he had time to do much digging, anywhere between
Dalton and Atlanta.
Sherman was delighted at the prospect, now that it loomed, and
he also took a chauvinistic pleasure in the fact that such an arrangement
gave the stellar role to McPherson, his favorite as well as Grant's, and
the Army of the Tennessee, which had been his own and, up till
Vicksburg, Grant's. Grant would approve, he knew when he wrote
Red Clay Minuet [323]
him of the plan, and as soon as that approval came down he passed the
word to his three lieutenants. They would be in position no later than
May 3, troops alerted for the jump-off next day, coincidental with
Meade's crossing of the Rapidan.
And so it was. Detraining on schedule at Cleveland, where the East
Tennessee & Georgia, coming down from Knoxville, branched to con-
nect with Chattanooga and Dalton, both just under thirty miles away,
Schofield prepared to march his army — in reality a corps, with three
divisions of infantry and one of cavalry — southward along the left
fork of the railroad to Red Clay, the state-line hamlet from which he was
to launch his disconcerting strike at Johnston's right, down the valley
east of Rocky Face. Thomas was poised beyond Ringgold, prepared to
confront the defenders on the ridge and hold them in position there by
pressing hard against Buzzard Roost and Dug Gap, threatening a break-
through at both places. McPherson meantime had moved down to Lee
& Gordon's Mill, at the south end of Chickamauga battlefield, which
gave him a twelve-mile leg on the roundabout march to Resaca and the
Oostanaula crossing. On May 4, in accordance with orders, all three
began their separate movements designed to "knock Jos. Johnston."
Sherman rode with Thomas in the center, but his hopes were with
McPherson; "my whiplash," he called the Army of the Tennessee.
Despite the setbacks the rebels had suffered East and West in the
past year, hard fighting lay ahead and Sherman knew it. "No amount
of poverty or adversity seems to shake their faith," he marveled;
"niggers gone, wealth and luxury gone, money worthless, starvation in
view . . . yet I see no sign of let up — some few deserters, plenty tired
of war, but the masses determined to fight it out." What they needed
was more violent persuasion, he believed, and he was prepared to give
it in full measure. "All that has gone before is mere skirmishing," he
wrote his wife on setting forth.
Mere skirmishing was all it came to in the course of the next
two days — the horrendous span of the Wilderness conflict, up in
Virginia, where Lee and Meade lost better than 25,000 men between
them — while Thomas felt his way forward along the Western &
Atlantic and Schofield trudged down the other railroad to Red Clay,
which took its name from the salmon-colored soil, powdery in dry
weather and a torment to the nostrils of men on the march, but quick
to turn as slippery as grease, newcomers would soon discover, under
the influence of even the briefest shower.
There was no hurry at this stage of the game, both commanders
having been told to give McPherson plenty of time on his roundabout
march. On the third day out, the Cumberlanders ran into their first
substantial opposition at Tunnel Hill, where the railroad went under-
ground before emerging for its plunge through the gap in the ridge,
two miles beyond. The rebs had set up a fortified outpost here, and
[324]
THE CIVIL WAR3ST1864
Thomas had to attack with a whole corps next day, May 7, in order to
drive them back on their main line, dug in along the steep west slope
of Rocky Face Ridge, above Buzzard Roost and below it down to Dug
Gap, five miles south. While this success — so complete, indeed, that
the Confederate rear guard had no time to damage the tunnel before
retreating — was being followed up, preparatory to coming to grips
in earnest with the defenders on their ridge, Schofield crossed the
Georgia line and pressed on for Varnell Station, his initial objective, a
little less than midway between Red Clay and Dalton. Harassed by
small bodies of gray horsemen, he moved slowly, that day and the
next, and then on May 9 detached a brigade of cavalry to brush these
gadflies from his path. It was a mistake. Wheeler's troopers, fading back,
drew the blue riders out of contact with the main body, then turned
and, with a sudden, unexpected slash, killed or captured some 150 of
them, including the colonel in command, and drove the remainder head-
long from the field.
Sherman was no more upset by this than he was by Thomas's
lack of progress on the near side of the intervening ridge. Three full-
Red Clay Minuet [ 325 ]
scale assaults the day before, and another five today — mainly against
Mill Creek Gap, but also against Dug Gap, down the line — had met
with failure in varying degrees. Two of the uphill attacks, in fact, had
managed to put blue troops on the actual crest, within clear sight of
Dalton, but they stayed there no longer than it took the defenders to
counterattack and drive them back downhill. If anything, this was better
than he had expected them to do: especially after his first hard look at
what he described as "the terrible door of death that Johnston had pre-
pared for them in the Buzzard Roost." Thomas and Schofield were
charged with attracting and holding the attention of the rebels in their
respective fronts, and this they had surely done. Sherman's main con-
cern and hopes were still with McPherson, far off beyond the mountains
to the south. What one observer called his "electric alertness," while
following the progress of the fighting down the railroad below Ring-
gold, was probably due more to anxiety about his protege, from whom
he had heard nothing in the past three days, than it was to any expecta-
tion of victory in Thomas's contest on Rocky Face or Schofield's around
Varnell Station, half a dozen miles across the way. Believing strongly
in McPherson's military judgment and acumen, he had given him full
discretion in conducting the movement designed to outfox Johnston;
but he knew only too well that in war few things were certain, least
of all the safety of a column deep in the enemy rear, no matter how
capably led.
Then all, or nearly all, his worries vanished, giving way to jubila-
tion and high feather. Taking an early supper near Tunnel Hill late
that afternoon, May 9, he was delighted to receive a courier bearing
McPherson's first dispatch, written that morning when he emerged
from Snake Creek Gap after rounding the far end of Rocky Face
Ridge. He was within five miles of Resaca, he reported, and pressing
on, with nothing to contest his progress but a scattered handful of
butternut horsemen, flushed out of the brush on the west side of the gap.
Sherman boiled over with elation at the news, for it meant that by now
McPherson's guns most likely had destroyed the bridges across the
Oostanaula, thereby cutting the Confederates at Dalton off from all
supplies and reinforcements south of that critical point; in which case
they would have no choice except to turn and flee, and when they did
he would come down hard and heavy on their rear, while McPherson
stood firm in their front, astride the railroad.
Exultant, he banged the table so emphatically with his fist that
the supper dishes did a rattling dance. "I've got Joe Johnston dead!"
he cried.
He very nearly did; very nearly; except that Johnston, taking
alarm at the first sign of his advance, had moved to forestall him without
even suspecting what he was up to, out there beyond the screening
[326] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
ridges to the west and south. The bluecoats had no sooner stirred
from their camps, May 4, than the southern commander renewed his
plea to Richmond for reinforcements from Polk, even if they amounted
to no more than a single division. "I urge you to send [these troops]
at once to Rome, and put them at my disposal till the enemy can be
met," he wired Bragg. Bragg replied, promptly for once, with orders
for Polk to do as Johnston asked. Moreover, Jefferson Davis (in still
another instance of that "presidential interference" with which his
critics often charged him) enlarged the order by telegraphing in-
structions for his friend the bishop-general to go along in person and
take with him not only the one requested division, but also "any other
available force at your command." Polk had three divisions of infantry
and one of cavalry, a total of 19,000 men. His decision was to hold
none of them back except a garrison of about 2000 for Selma. After
getting the first division on the road to Rome, where boxcars were be-
ing collected to speed this advance contingent down the branch line,
east to Kingston, then northward up the Western & Atlantic to join
Johnston around Dalton, he prepared to follow with the rest next day
for a share in the task of keeping the Yankees out of Atlanta and the
heartland.
That was how it came about that Sherman's "whiplash" lost its
sting. For while Polk was en route from Demopolis — first by rail,
through Selma and Talladega, to Blue Mountain, the end of the line,
and then on foot the rest of the way, seventy rugged miles cross-
country to Rome — a brigade of about 2000 men under Brigadier
General James Cantey was summoned from Mobile to join him there
and thus complete what would constitute a third corps for the Army
of Tennessee, roughly equal in strength to each of the other two. Travel-
ing all the way by rail, through Montgomery and Atlanta, Cantey
reached Rome on May 5, but was shifted two days later to Resaca,
clearing the way for Polk's arrival, placing him closer to Dalton in case
he was needed sooner, and incidentally doubling the strength of the
small garrison in the intrenchments Johnston had had constructed
there to cover the critical Oostanaula crossing. Two mornings later,
on May 9, after pausing only long enough to send the message that
would cause Sherman to set the supper dishes dancing, McPherson
pressed on across Sugar Valley, still driving the handful of butternut
cavalry before him, and at midday, within a mile of Resaca, came
under heavy infantry fire from a line of intrenchments, anchored on
the south to the Oostanaula and curving west and north of the town.
There were only about 4000 Confederates in the works; but Mc-
Pherson did not know that, and in any case this was about 4000 more
than he expected. He felt out the defenses, found them stout, and
decided that under the circumstances, unsupported as he was, deep in
the rear of an enemy twice his size, his wisest course was to exercise
Red Clay Minuet [ 327 ]
the discretion his orders afforded him and return to Snake Creek Gap,
where his 25,000 would be safe from attack by whatever forces John-
ston had sent or was sending to meet this no-longer-secret threat to the
rebel life line. He was back in the gap by nightfall, and there, with
both flanks covered, his front intrenched, and his rear out of reach of
the enemy east of the ridge, he lay coiled in compact security — like
a snake, ready to strike, or a whip laid away in a cubbyhole, unused.
When Johnston learned that evening of the sudden appearance of
bluecoats in his rear he reacted by ordering Hood to move at once
with three divisions, one from his own and two from Hardee's corps,
to help Cantey meet any renewal of the threat. Hood did so, but when
he reconnoitered west of Resaca next afternoon and reported Mc-
Pherson still immured in Snake Creek Gap, Johnston interpreted the
movement as a feint designed to draw his attention away from the main
Union effort to turn or overrun the northern half of Rocky Face Ridge.
Accordingly, he told Hood to come back to his former position but to
drop Hardee's two divisions off at Tilton, a station on the railroad be-
tween Dalton and Resaca, from which they could move swiftly to meet
a crisis in either direction. Meantime Hardee, stripped of half his
corps, had been puzzled by the relative inactivity of Thomas, who,
after three days of obstinate hammering, had finally slackened his effort
to break through the two gaps. "I am only uneasy about my right," the
Georgia-born West Pointer said, "and won't be uneasy about that
when Hood returns." All the same, finding himself "unable to decide
what the Yankees are endeavoring to accomplish," he began to suspect
that they were up to something not in Johnston's calculations.
And so, by now, did Johnston himself. Polk had reached Rome
today with his lead division and was sending it on to Resaca ahead of
the others, which were close behind. This gave Johnston considerably
more security at both places, but still he wondered at the easing of the
pressure against one end of the ridge while McPherson took up a
position off the other end. He began to suspect that Sherman might be
moving more than McPherson, perhaps in the same direction and even
farther, for a crossing of the river deep in his rear. Next morning,
May 11, he gave Wheeler orders to send some horsemen around the
north end of Rocky Face, if possible, for a probe at the flank of the
Federals in position there. "Try to ascertain where their left rests," he
told him, "and whether they are in motion toward the Oostanaula."
Altogether aware of Sherman's advantage, that with close to
twice the number of troops he could apply immobilizing pressure in
front while rounding or striking one or both Confederate flanks, John-
ston had to count on luck as well as skill in maneuvering his opponent
into committing some tactical gaffe that would expose the superior
blue army, or anyhow some vital portion of it, to destruction. Such an
opportunity, if it came, could scarcely occur except while that army
[ 328 ] THE CIVIL WAR ^ 1864
was in motion, and for this reason — plus the fact that it had always
been his style, his inclination, even back in the Old Dominion, around
Manassas or down on the York-James peninsula — the Virginian was
prepared from the outset to relinquish almost any position, no matter
how strong, if by so doing he could encourage his adversary, on taking
up the pursuit, to commit the blunder that might lead to his undoing. The
odds against this were long, he knew, but so were the odds he faced.
Moreover, he would be falling back toward reinforcements, even if
they amounted to no more than Governor Brown's kid-glove militia,
and would be shortening his supply line while the enemy's grew longer
and more vulnerable. He also took encouragement from the belief that
Sherman — who, after all, had been relieved of duty, back in the first
year of the war, under suspicion of insanity — was high-strung, erratic
in the extreme, and reported to be enamored of long-chance experi-
ments, both tactical and strategic. These were qualities much to be
desired in an opponent at this juncture. The trouble was that Johnston
himself, with far less margin for error, had to rely on subordinates quite
as erratic and a good deal more temperamental. "If I were President,"
he confided to a friend soon after taking over the faction-riddled
Army of Tennessee, which had just been driven from Missionary
Ridge after eighteen months under Braxton Bragg, "I'd distribute the
generals of this army over the Confederacy."
In point of fact, that was precisely what R. E. Lee had been doing
with some of those subordinates who failed or displeased or failed to
please him in the course of the past two years; but Johnston, less in
harmony with the authorities in Richmond, mainly had to make do
with what he had. Fortunately, this wholesale condemnation did not
include the leaders immediately below him on the military ladder.
Highly dependable if not brilliant in the discharge of their duties,
Polk and Hardee had been corps commanders ever since Shiloh, and
Hood, though young and new to both his post and the army — he was
thirty-two and had been made a lieutenant general at the time of his
transfer from Longstreet, just three months ago, whereas Polk and
Hardee, fifty-eight and thirty-eight respectively, had held that rank
ever since it was created in the fall of '62 — was a fighter any chief
would be glad to have at his disposal when victory swung in the bal-
ance and an extra measure of savagery was called for.
While he thus was counting his blessings and woes — and inci-
dentally, such was the diminution of blue pressure against the gaps,
admonishing some impetuous artillerists on Rocky Face Ridge for
firing at targets not worth their ammunition — he sent word for Polk
to proceed at once from Rome to Resaca, where he would assume
command "and make the proper dispositions to defend the passage of the
river and our communications." Johnston also took the occasion to
suggest "the immediate movement of Forrest [who had been left
Red Clay Minuet [ 329 ]
behind for the defense of North Mississippi] into Middle Tennessee."
Quite as desirous of cutting Sherman's life line as Sherman was of
cutting his, he added that he was "fully persuaded" that Forrest, rested
by now from his raid on Paducah and the reduction of Fort Pillow,
"would meet no force there that could resist him." What might come
of this he did not know; such a decision, involving the abandonment of
a portion of the President's home state to Yankee depredations, was up
to Richmond. But as evidence accumulated in Dalton that some kind of
movement was in progress on the other side of Rocky Face, Johnston
took the precaution of shifting another of Hardee's divisions south of
Dug Gap, to a position with a road in its rear leading down into Sugar
Valley. Late in the day Wheeler returned from his probe of the Union
left with confirmation of the wisdom of such precautions. Beyond the
ridge, the Federals were "moving everything" to their right, though
whether they were massing near Dug Gap for a renewal of their try
for a breakthrough there, or were heading for Snake Creek Gap to join
McPherson for an attack on Resaca, or had it in mind to slog on past
both gateways for a crossing of the Oostanaula farther down, no one
could say. In any case Johnston saw that if it turned out to be either
of the last two choices he could not long remain where he now was; he
would certainly have to fall back no later than tomorrow. The question
was whether he would end his withdrawal on this or the far side of the
river fifteen miles in his rear.
That evening he was encouraged by a visit and some welcome
news from Polk, who had encountered Hood at Resaca and returned
with him to Dalton for a conference with their chief. The good news
was that his second division had reached Rome today, was already on
its way by rail to join the first in the Resaca intrenchments, and would
soon be followed by the other two, expected at Rome tomorrow. John-
ston shook his old friend warmly by the hand; they had been cadets
together at West Point thirty-five years ago. "How can I thank you?"
he said with feeling. "I asked for a division, but you have come your-
self and brought me your army."
Polk flushed with pleasure at the praise, and after the council of
war had ended, around midnight, took part in another exchange which
gave him even greater pleasure than the first. On the train ride up to
Dalton, Hood had confided that he wished to be baptized and received
into the Church, and now that army business was out of the way the
churchman was glad to oblige. Episcopal Bishop of Louisiana for twenty
years before the war, he often remarked that he looked forward to re-
turning to his priestly calling as soon as the fighting was over and inde-
pendence had been won. Meantime he seldom neglected a chance, such as
this, to work for the salvation of any soul. The two repaired to the
young general's quarters, accompanied by members of their staffs, and
there by candlelight Polk performed the baptismal rites, using a tin
[330] THE CIVIL WAR^" 1864
washpan for a font. Then came the confirmation. Because of the mu-
tilations Hood had suffered at Chickamauga and Gettysburg, where he
had lost a leg and the use of one arm, the bishop absolved the candidate
from kneeling, as was customary, suggesting instead that he remain
seated for the ceremony. But Hood would have none of this. If he
could not kneel, and he could not, he would stand. And thus it was
that, leaning on his crutches, the big tawny-bearded Kentuckian was
received into the fold. "Defend, O Lord, this thy child with thy heavenly
grace," the bishop intoned, his hand upon the bowed head before him,
"that he may continue thine forever, and daily increase in thy Holy
Spirit more and more, until he come unto thy everlasting kingdom."
Despite the lateness of the hour, Polk returned that night to
Resaca, charged with holding the place on his own until such time as
the rest of the now three-corps army joined him. He was unlikely to
be alone for long, however; Johnston's mind was about made up. Next
morning, as evidence of a full-scale Union sidle continued to mount,
he decided to evacuate Dalton — or, more accurately, to complete
the evacuation, since nearly half of his army, exclusive of Polk, was
already south of the town in any case — as soon as the night was dark
enough to mask his withdrawal from the covering ridge.
He would do so, what was more, with small regret. "The position
had little to recommend it," he afterwards explained. "At Dalton the
Federal army, even if beaten, would have had a secure place of refuge
at Chattanooga, while our only place of safety was Atlanta, a hundred
miles off with three rivers intervening. ... I therefore decided to
remain on the defensive." His mind, it would seem from this subsequent
outline of his strategic intentions, was already on the third of those
three rivers. "Fighting under cover," he went on, "we would have
trifling losses compared with those inflicted. Moreover, due to its
lengthening lines the numerical superiority of the Federal army would
be reduced daily so that we might hope to cope with it on equal terms
beyond the Chattahoochee, where defeat would be its destruction."
This did not mean that he did not hope to inflict a defeat on the
enemy in the course of his hundred-mile withdrawal. He did hope for
it, despite the odds, either as the result of breaking the railroad deep
in Sherman's rear, which would oblige the blue host to retire, or else
as the result of catching his adversary in a tactical blunder that would
expose him to piecemeal destruction somewhere down the line: maybe
even within the next couple of days near Resaca, Johnston's intended
first stop, on the near bank of the Oostanaula, first of the three rivers
in his rear.
That was his destination now, and by sunrise next morning — Fri-
day the 1 3th — not a Confederate was left on the northern half of Rocky
Face Ridge or in Dalton itself. Johnston was off on what an opposing
general called "one of his clean retreats."
Red Clay Minuet [331
Sherman by now was on the verge of completing the movement
that prompted Johnston's pull-out. Vexed by the news that his protege
had flinched from pressing the attack that was to have crowned his
roundabout march to the outskirts of Resaca — news that hit all the
harder by arriving close on the heels of the first report that the objective
was practically within McPherson's grasp — the northern commander
felt terribly let down. "Such an opportunity does not occur twice in a
single life," he lamented, although he was quick to admit that his
fellow Ohioan had been "perfectly justified" by his discretionary
orders. "I regret beyond measure that you did not break the railroad,
however little," he replied next morning, "but I suppose it was im-
possible."
He rather suspected that he should have used a larger force on
the flanking operation, as Thomas originally suggested, and he planned
to follow through by doing so now, all out. Leaving one corps of
infantry and a cavalry division to continue the demonstration in front
of "the terrible door of death," thereby covering Chattanooga and
holding the Confederate main body in position around Dalton, he would
march the rest of Thomas's army and all of Schofield's down the valley
west of Rocky Face Ridge, on around its lower end, to join McPherson
for a massive lunge at Resaca, the railroad that ran through it, and the
vital river crossing in its rear. Johnston then would be cut off from his
base, with no choice except to scatter or give battle: which in either
case, as Sherman saw it, would result in his defeat. There was of course
an outside chance that Johnston, who would have the advantage of
moving a shorter distance over superior roads, might fall rapidly back on
Resaca, while the rest of the blue army was en route, and turn on the
force holed up in Snake Creek Gap; but that had been considered and
taken care of, more or less, beforehand. "Should he attack you," Sher-
man told McPherson at the close of the dispatch informing him of his
measureless regret and his new plan, "fight him to the last and I will
get to you."
This was a good deal easier said, and planned, than done. Close
to 70,000 troops had to be disengaged from contact with an enemy
mainly on high ground, which made secrecy all the more difficult to
maintain, and put in motion on narrow, meandering roads. A day was
needed to get ready, then better than two more for the march. It was
late afternoon of the fourth day, Friday the 13 th, before the three com-
mands were consolidated and put into attack formations, west of
Resaca, for the contemplated lunge. By then the sun was too far down
for anything more than a bit of preliminary skirmishing, including a
crossroads cavalry clash in which Judson Kilpatrick and Joe Wheeler
— West Pointers both, the former four months into and the latter four
[332] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
months short of his twenty-eighth year — took each other's measure.
Kilpatrick was unhorsed by a stray bullet on this unlucky day, and
though friendly troopers managed to lug him off the field before the
graybacks could get at him, he would be out of action for some
weeks.
Regrettable as this was, the loss of time on the cramped approach
march down the valley was even more so. McPherson, Thomas, and
Schofield were on hand and in line of battle by sundown, within gun
range of the rebel works, but Johnston was there ahead of them with
all three of his corps, Hood and Hardee having completed their retro-
grade movement from Dalton before noon. Increased in strength by
nearly one third with the addition of Polk's corps to their army, they
occupied skillfully laid-out intrenchments that ran in a long convex
line from the Oostanaula, downstream from Resaca on their left, to the
near bank of a tributary river, the Connasauga, on their right beyond
the railroad north of town.
Sherman was neither daunted nor discouraged by his loss of the
race for Resaca; Johnston was there, inviting attack with his back
to the river, and the redhead planned to oblige him. "I will press him
all that is possible," he wired Halleck. "Weather fine and troops in fine
order. All is working well." Informed that Grant had emerged from
the Wilderness and now was mauling Lee at Spotsylvania, he added,
still in the pep-talk vein: "Let us keep the ball rolling."
It rolled, but only a short distance in the course of the daylong
fight; Johnston's engineers had given him all he asked in the way of
protection for his men. McPherson, on the right — goaded no doubt
by Sherman's reproach when they met in Snake Creek Gap the day be-
fore: "Well, Mac, you missed the opportunity of your life" — scored
what little gain there was by driving Polk's forward elements from some
high ground west of the town. Elsewhere along the four-mile curve
of the rebel works, the ball either stopped or rebounded. Thomas made
no headway in the center, and Schofield took a beating on the left,
beyond the railroad, when the Confederates in his front launched a
sudden attack that drove him back nearly half a mile as the day ended.
This came about as the result of Johnston's calculation that McPherson's
success against his left, down near the Oostanaula, must mean that
Sherman was concentrating most of his strength in that direction.
Accordingly, while Bishop Polk, informally clad in an old hunting
shirt and a slouch hat, stiffened his resistance to limit the enemy gains in
his front, and Hardee continued to stand fast in the center, wearing by
contrast a new dove-gray uniform with fire-gilt buttons and a white
cravat, Johnston sent word for Hood to test the Union left for the
weakness he suspected. This Hood did, with good results which might
have been much better if darkness had not put an end to his pursuit.
Red Clay Minuet [333]
Johnston, highly pleased, ordered a renewal of the attack at first light
next morning.
He had been in excellent spirits all that day, riding from point to
point along the line, at his jaunty best "in a light or mole colored hat,
with a black feather in it." A Tennessee private, seeing him thus, re-
called the scene years later. A small man, neatly turned out and genial in
manner, fluffy white side-whiskers framing the wedge-shaped face
with its trim mustache and grizzled chin beard — "like the pictures
you see hung upon the walls," the veteran was to write — Johnston sat
his horse, head cocked to catch the swell of gunfire, left and right and
center, where Polk and Hood and Hardee were defending the works
his foresight had provided. Scattered whoops of recognition prompted
the rest of the troops in the passing column of Tennesseans, "and the
very ground seems to shake with cheers. Old Joe smiles as blandly as a
modest maid, raises his hat in acknowledgement, makes a polite bow,
and rides toward the firing."
This brightened outlook persisted into the night, but darkened
progressively in reaction to the arrival, in all too rapid sequence, of three
umvelcome intelligence reports. While visiting Hood on the right he
learned that the Union corps left at Dalton had completed its march
down the railroad this evening to reinforce Schofield, and riding west-
ward to confer with Polk he found McPherson had brought artillery
onto the high ground lost today, with the result that long-range shells
were able to reach both the railway and turnpike bridges close in his
rear. Endangering as it did his line of retreat, this gave him pause indeed.
He instructed his staff engineer to throw a pontoon bridge a mile above
the permanent spans, beyond reach of the Yankee guns, and start at
once to build a road leading down to it on the near bank and away
from it on the other. Sensitive as always to such threats to his flanks
or rear, he countermanded Hood's instructions for tomorrow and told
him to return instead to the position from which he had launched his
attack this afternoon. Presently, with the arrival of the third unwelcome
bit of news, he had cause for greater alarm and even greater caution.
Cavalry scouts reported that enemy units of considerable strength had
crossed the Oostanaula several miles downstream, where a deep east-
ward bend of the river brought them within easy reach of the Western
& Atlantic. Johnston reacted swiftly to this threat to the railroad and
his line of retreat by ordering the immediate detachment of Major
General W. H. T. Walker's division from Hardee for a night march to
the reported point of crossing, there to contest any further advance by
the Federals while the rest of the army prepared for a quick withdrawal
across the river, either to reinforce Walker or outstrip the blue column
which by then might have overwhelmed him.
Morning brought a renewal of Federal pressure all along the line,
[334] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
quite as if there had been no reduction for a sidle. Johnston held his
ground, awaiting developments, and shortly after noon received a dis-
patch from Walker informing him that the report of a downstream
crossing was untrue. By then the pressure against Resaca had some-
what diminished, and Johnston decided to go back to his plan for a
renewal of the attack by Hood, who promptly returned to the position
he had won the day before. A battery, pushed well to the front to
support the jump-off, opened prematurely and was replied to so
effectively, by infantry and counterbattery fire, that the cannoneers
had to abandon all four guns, left mute and unattended between
the lines. This did not augur well for the success of Hood's assault,
but as he was about to go forward in all-out earnest, a message came
from the army commander, once more canceling the attack and in-
structing the three lieutenant generals to attend a council of war that
evening at his headquarters.
There they learned the reason for this second change of plans. A
follow-up dispatch from Walker reported the bluecoats over the down-
stream Oostanaula after all, and Johnston had decided to give up
Resaca. The council had not been called for a discussion of his decision,
but rather for the assignment of routes on the march to meet this
threat to the army's life line; Polk and Hardee would use the turnpike
and railway spans, despite the danger of long-range interdictory fire,
and Hood the new-laid pontoon bridge.
All went as planned, or nearly so, including heavy volleys of
musketry by front-line units at midnight to cover the withdrawal of
iron-tired artillery and supply vehicles. Rear guards took up the pontoons
and loaded them onto wagons for use in crossing other rivers, farther
south, and the railroad bridge was set afire to burn till it fell hissing into
the Oostanaula. Through some administrative oversight — not unlike the
one at Tunnel Hill a week ago, which left the railway tunnel unob-
structed — in the last-minute confusion, as dawn was breaking, the turn-
pike bridge was overlooked and left standing, fit for use by the
pursuers. All that was really lost in the way of army property, how-
ever, was the four-gun Confederate battery abandoned between Hood's
and Schofield's lines that afternoon. This came hard for the young
Kentucky-born West Pointer, who had a great deal of pride in such
matters (in time he would take it even harder, since they turned out
to be the only guns Johnston lost in the whole course of the cam-
paign) but who consoled himself, as best he could, by pointing out
"that they were four old iron pieces, not worth the sacrifice of the
life of even one man."
Sherman pressed on after the retiring Confederates, hoping to
catch up with them before they had time to develop still another stout
position in which to receive him, and continued simultaneously two
flanking operations he had set in motion two days ago, both involving
Red Clay Minuet [ 335 ]
only cavalry at the outset. Kilpatrick's division, minus its wounded
leader, had been sent five miles downriver on May 14 to install a pair
of pontoon bridges at Lay's Ferry, and Sherman had followed this
up yesterday by detaching Brigadier General Thomas Sweeny's infantry
division from McPherson to march down and cross the river at that point,
along with Kilpatrick's troopers, in order to menace Johnston's rear;
which Sweeny had done with such success that the graybacks were
now in full retreat. At the same time, a wider, deeper, and potentially
even more profitable thrust was launched by sending another of
Thomas's mounted divisions, under Brigadier General Kenner Garrard,
far down the right bank of the Oostanaula to threaten and if possible
enter Rome, wrecking its factories and iron works and taking over the
branch-line railroad leading east along the north bank of the Etowah
to Kingston, on the Western & Atlantic, better than twenty miles be-
low Resaca. Now that Johnston was falling back, Sherman decided to
beef up this deeper probe by sending Brigadier General Jefferson C.
Davis's division of Cumberlanders to follow the cavalry and take part
in the raid on Rome and the eastward strike at Kingston.
The red-haired commander was leaving no card unplayed in his
eagerness to come to grips with his skittish opponent, and he scoffed
at the notion, advanced by several members of his staff, that Johnston
was falling back quite willingly, in accordance with a plan to draw his
pursuers southward to their destruction. "Had he remained in Dalton
another hour, it would have been his total defeat," Sherman insisted,
"and he only evacuated Resaca because his safety demanded it." As for
the disappointment some critics expressed at his failure, so far, to bring
the wily Virginian to all-or-nothing battle — particularly before Polk
arrived from Alabama, in the interim between Dalton and Resaca, to
shorten the long numerical odds — he countered that, while he shared
the regret that he had not managed to do this, he also saw a clear ad-
vantage in the way the campaign had developed up to now. "Of course
I was disappointed not to have crippled his army more at that particular
stage of the game," he later wrote; "but, as it resulted, these rapid
successes gave us the initiative, and the usual impulse of a conquering
army."
Determined to make the most of that conquering impulse, he
devised a pursuit combining speed with other tactical advantages.
While Thomas struck out down the railroad, hard in the wake of the
fleeing enemy, McPherson was instructed to proceed at once to Lay's
Ferry for a crossing that would place him well to the right on the
march south, in position to make another rapid flanking movement as
soon as the rebels called a halt or were brought to one by pressure
against their rear, and Schofield was told to do the same in the opposite
direction, crossing upstream from Resaca at Field's Ferry for a march
well to the east, in case it developed that the enemy right was the
336
THE CIVIL WAR
1 864
flank that should be turned. This not only increased the celerity of
the pursuit by not funneling all the Federal troops down one crowded
road; it also assured that when the time came for fighting, all three
component armies would be ready for action in their accustomed
roles, Thomas's as the holding force and McPherson's and Schofield's
as flankers. Moreover, to bring all three into better numerical balance
and lessen the traffic on the turnpike, Sherman detached Hooker's
three divisions from Thomas and sent them off to the left with Scho-
CoosaZkiver
field, whose strength thus was raised to more than 30,000 while Thomas's
was reduced to about 40,000, three other divisions, including two of
cavalry, having already been detached for the raid on Rome, still in
progress down the Oostanaula, and the preliminary crossing at Lay's
Ferry, where Sweeny's division rejoined McPherson, together with
Red Clay Minuet [337]
Kilpatrick's troopers, who fanned out frontward to provide a screen
for the column west of the railroad.
The first day's march, May 16, ended at Calhoun, where Sherman
thought it likely that Johnston would make a stand, six miles down the
track from Resaca, but before he could call in either of the lateral
columns, which were also over the river by then, the Confederate rear
guard pulled out southward in the darkness, headed apparently for
Adairsville, ten miles down the line. There was heavier skirmishing there
next day near sundown, but dawn of May 18 showed the graybacks
gone again. Schofield by now was in the vicinity of Sallacoa and Mc-
Pherson at McGuire, hamlets respectively half a dozen miles east and
west of Adairsville; Sherman, riding with Thomas in the center, held
to this spread-eagle formation as he took up the march for Kingston,
another ten miles down the Western & Atlantic. He felt certain that
Johnston would dig in there, on the near bank of the Etowah, and he
wanted to get at him before he had much chance to get set for the
shock.
Spirits were high in all three columns of pursuit, not only be-
cause the rebs were on the run, having been turned out of two
practically impregnable positions in less than two weeks, but also
because well-drilled rail repair gangs — helped considerably, it was
true, by the enemy's rattled negligence in failing to obstruct the tunnel
short of Buzzard Roost — had functioned with such efficiency that even
the troops out front, in the process of covering better than half the
distance from Chattanooga to Atlanta, had scarcely missed a meal along
the way. "The rapidity with which the badly broken railroad was re-
paired seemed miraculous," Major General O. O. Howard, one of
Thomas's corps commanders, later noted. "We had hardly left Dalton
before trains with ammunition and other supplies arrived. While our
skirmishing was going on at Calhoun, the locomotive whistle sounded in
Resaca. The telegraphers were nearly as rapid: the lines were in order
to Adairsville on the morning of the 1 8th. While we were breaking
up the state arsenal at Adairsville, caring for the wounded, and bringing
in Confederate prisoners, word was telegraphed from Resaca that
bacon, hard bread, and coffee were already there at our service."
All this had been accomplished, moreover, at a cost of fewer than
4000 casualties, and not only was this figure much lower than had
been anticipated, it was also — despite the supposed high price en-
tailed in attacking prepared defenses — not much larger than the enemy
total, which included a number of lightly wounded men who had to be
left behind and thus became permanent losses, as captives, whereas a
Union soldier, left behind under similar circumstances, could be patched
up and returned to duty, sometimes overnight. It was no wonder then,
with success achieved at so low a cost and without the sacrifice of
creature comforts, that spirits were high and the outcome of the ex-
[338] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
pected Kingston confrontation seemed foregone. What was more, as the
three main widespread columns prepared for a convergence at that
point — forty air-line miles from Tunnel Hill, scene of the opening
clash eleven days ago — word came that a prize even more valuable
than the state arsenal at Adairsville had fallen into the hands of the
invaders. That same morning, May 18, Rome fell undefended to Davis
and Garrard, who soon would be working their way east along the
branch-line railroad to rejoin the Army of the Cumberland.
Rome with its factories and iron works, so important to the rebel
cause, was a strategic plum worth giving thanks for, but tactically the
railroad was a prize worth even more, since practically all of Johnston's
reinforcements had reached him by that route. Now it was closed,
except to Federal use, and Sherman — still with Thomas, who was
engaged in what Howard called "a running skirmish" down the
Western & Atlantic with troops from Hardee's corps, which apparently
had been given the rear-guard post of honor on the Confederate re-
treat — had 100,000 effectives converging as fast as their legs could
carry them toward Kingston, where reports indicated that Johnston
had at last been brought to bay with his back to the Etowah River.
For once, by dint of hard marching on rural roads and steady
pressure on the rebel rear, execution matched conception; the con-
vergence would be effected by midday tomorrow, May 19, on schedule
and with each of the three component armies in its assigned position
for the final thrust, Schofleld left, McPherson right, and Thomas center.
The trouble was that Sherman, for all the speed and precision of his
approach, was converging on a vacuum. Johnston was not at Kingston;
he was at Cassville, five miles east, preparing to spring an ambush that
would eliminate, or at any rate badly mangle, a solid third of the blue
force whose commander had at last afforded him the opportunity he
had been awaiting ever since the campaign opened, two weeks and
better than forty miles ago.
Leaving Resaca, two days back, he had intended to make a stand
at Calhoun, provided he could find a suitable position — athwart a rather
narrow valley, say, which would afford protection for his flanks and
thus oblige the Federals to come at him head-on, their numerical ad-
vantage canceled by the limited width of front — but when recon-
naissance revealed none he moved on that night, hoping to find what he
was seeking near Adairsville the following day, May 17. He did not. He
did, however, receive a telegraphic dispatch and some cavalry reports
which together had the double effect of lifting his spirits and enabling
him to arrive at a plan for stopping the blue army in its tracks. Stephen
Lee, left in charge of the adjoining department when Polk departed for
Georgia, responded to Johnston's week-old request by announcing
Red Clay Minuet [ 339 ]
that Forrest, with 3500 picked horsemen and two batteries of artillery,
would set out within three days for an attack on Sherman's lines of
supply and communication up in Middle Tennessee. This was welcome
news, indeed, and Johnston called a council of war that evening to pass
it on to his corps commanders, along with their respective assignments
for carrying out his table-turning plan.
Intelligence reports from Wheeler made it clear that Sherman's
pursuit was in three columns, widely spaced, and now that Johnston
had decided to continue his march toward the Etowah, he saw in this
a rare opportunity to deal with one of those isolated segments before
it could call on either of the other two for help. From Adairsville, rail-
road and turnpike ran due south to Kingston; Hardee would continue
on that route, skirmishing as he went, to draw Thomas after him and
encourage the impression that he was guarding the rear of the other
two corps as they moved ahead of him, down the tracks and pike,
for a stand at Kingston. But that was by no means to be the case. Polk
and Hood would march instead by a road leading east of south to
Cassville, a village about two miles on this side of the Western & Atlantic,
which swung due east at Kingston, five miles west. The advantage was
that Schofield, reinforced to 30,000, would pass near there on his way
to the convergence Sherman would surely order when he became con-
vinced that the graybacks intended to call a halt at Kingston. With
Thomas five miles off, McPherson perhaps ten, and Hardee in position
to delay their eastward advance along the railroad, Hood and Polk
should have ample time to dispose of Schofield before the other two
could reach him. With any luck, all three gray corps could then com-
bine to take on Thomas and strike at McPherson when he came up in
turn. Dealt with piecemeal, all three Union armies might be destroyed in
short order, or anyhow crippled and brought to a stumbling halt;
which would serve about as well, since they soon would get the news
that Forrest had severed their life line, up in Tennessee. That would
leave them no choice except starvation or retreat. Either way, the
campaign would be over and the world once more would stand amazed
at still another Confederate triumph against overwhelming odds.
Eager though they were to take up their divergent marches,
which were to end with a long-deferred return to the offensive, all
three corps commanders went with their chief to his tent, where Polk
donned his surplice and stood in front of an improvised altar, prepar-
ing to fulfill a request Mrs Johnston had made in a letter written two
days ago. She wanted the bishop to do for her husband what he had
done for Hood the week before; "lead my soldier nearer to God.
General Johnston has never been baptised. It is the dearest wish of my
heart that he should be, and that you should perform the ceremony."
Once more with candlelight glinting on the brass and gold lace of the
[340] THE CIVIL WAR**" 1864
uniforms of candidate and witnesses, the rite of baptism was performed,
after which the group dispersed to prepare for the execution of the plan
designed to reverse the tide of war in North Georgia.
Hardee took up his march, southward down the railroad, and with
the dawn resumed his "running skirmish" with Thomas, who con-
tinued to press hard upon his rear. Meantime the other two corps set
out on the road for Cassville, Hood in front with orders to occupy
a position tonight from which to strike at the left of Schofield's column
next morning, while Polk attacked the front; Hardee would join them
from Kingston, later in the day, so that all three could then turn on
Thomas and McPherson, simultaneously or in sequence, when they
came up in response to Schofield's cries for help. Unwelcome news
from Stephen Lee reached Johnston in the course of the approach
march, to the effect that a heavy enemy movement out of Memphis had
obliged him to postpone Forrest's raid on Sherman's life line. Offsetting
this somewhat, however, there was a report from Richmond that the
Federals had acknowledged the so-far loss of 45,000 men in Virginia,
thirty-one of them generals, and this gave rise to the airing of a theory
by some members of Johnston's staff that Sherman's intention was to
maneuver his adversary south of the Etowah, then call a halt and hurry
reinforcements to the bled-down Army of the Potomac. Johnston put
no stock in such talk; he remained intent on the prospect of giving Sher-
man so much trouble, on this side of the Etowah, that he soon would be
seeking assistance, not sending it either to Meade or to Banks, whose
fight at Yellow Bayou today was the last on his costly, disheartened
retreat down Red River.
Nightfall found the divided Confederate army in position: Hardee
at Kingston, prepared to turn east, and Hood and Polk at Cassville,
their ambush laid. Johnston's spirits were as high as Sherman's across the
way, and on far sounder grounds. Some measure of the Virginian's
confidence and martial elation came through in a general order he
composed that night and had read at the head of each regiment next
morning, May 19:
Soldiers of the Army of Tennessee:
You have displayed the highest qualities of the soldier — firmness
in combat, patience under toil. By your courage and skill you have
repulsed every assault of the enemy. By marches by day and marches
by night you have defeated every attempt upon your communica-
tions. Your communications are secured. You will now turn and
march to meet his advancing columns. Fully confiding in the conduct
of the officers, the courage of the soldiers, I lead you to battle. We
may confidently trust that the Almighty Father will still reward
the patriots' toils and the patriots' banners. Cheered by the success
of our brothers in Virginia and beyond the Mississippi, our efforts
Red Clay Minuet [ 341 ]
will equal theirs. Strengthened by His support, these efforts will be
crowned with the like glories.
J. E. Johnston,
General.
Despite the weariness resulting from three days and four nights of
marches broken only by rearward skirmishes and fitful snatches of road-
side sleep — not to mention the cumulative depression that went with
having abandoned better than forty miles of highly defensible terrain
without so much as a single fight that attained the dignity of a full-
scale battle — the reaction on all levels to the reading of this order, from
regimental commanders down to drummer boys, was quite as ecstatic
as even its author could have wished.
Among those officers who were better informed on current
events, mainly through having read such newspapers as were available
in camp and on the march, there lately had been growing an anxiety
that the good effect of the news from Louisiana and Virginia, which had
raised the price of gold on the New York market to 210, would be im-
paired by the apparently irreversible retreat of the Confederates in
North Georgia. Now though, with the word that they were going
over to the offensive, their anxiety was relieved and their hope soared,
anticipating a still greater drop in the pocketbook barometer that best
measured northern greed and fears. As for the men in the ranks, though
their faith in Old Joe had never wavered, their spirits took an even
higher bounce as they stood and heard the order read to them this
morning. "I never saw troops happier or more certain of success," one
private would recall. "A sort of grand halo illuminated every soldier's
face. . . . We were going to whip and rout the Yankees."
Johnston apparently shared this conviction that the Yankees would
be whipped and routed: especially as it applied to Schofield, who was
reported to be advancing heedlessly into the trap about to be sprung
northwest of Cassville. At 10.20, hearing from Hardee that Thomas
was moving in strength on Kingston and soon would be too heavily com-
mitted to effect a rapid disengagement, he sent his chief of staff, Brigadier
General W. W. Mackall — who had served Bragg, his West Point class-
mate, in the same capacity — to tell Polk and Hood "to make quick
work" of their combined lunge at Schofield, so that they would be ready
to turn without delay on Thomas, when he came up in Hardee's wake,
for the second phase of the Confederate offensive. With accustomed
caution, Johnston added to Hood's instructions a warning that, in
launching his flank attack, he was not to undertake "too wide a move-
ment," lest he lose contact with Polk on his left, which not only might
leave Schofield an escape hatch, but also would delay the consolidation
of all three corps for the follow-up strike at Thomas and McPherson.
[342] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
Such a warning was altogether superfluous, the staffer found when
he encountered Hood near Cassville. Not only had the Kentuckian
moved out before Mackall got there; by now he was moving back again,
feverishly preparing to take up a defensive position in which to resist
attack by a blue column reported to be advancing on a road in his right
rear, skirmishers deployed and guns booming.
Mackall sent word of this surprise development to Johnston, who
flatly declined to credit the report. "It can't be," he said. He did not be-
lieve the Federals were there because none of Polk's cavalry had en-
countered them this morning while reconnoitering in that direction. (In
point of fact, they had not been there earlier this morning, and it was
entirely accidental that they were there at all. A nomadic fragment from
Major General Daniel Butterfield's division, Hooker's corps, they had
missed a turning, lost their way, and wound up deep in Hood's right
rear, some five miles east of their comrades trudging south on the far
side of Cassville.) All the same, though Johnston did not believe in their
existence — then, any more than he did ten years later, when he de-
clared: "The report upon which General Hood acted was manifestly
untrue" — he took no chances. Having rejected the evidence, he pro-
ceeded to act upon it. "If that's so," he said, examining the situation on
a map, "General Hood will have to fall back at once."
Accordingly, when Mackall presently returned, he sent him riding
again to Polk and Hood with orders canceling their attack. Once more,
as had been its custom for the past two weeks, the army would take up
a stout defensive position and there await developments: meaning
Sherman.
Johnston quickly found what he was seeking along a wooded ridge
immediately southeast of Cassville, overlooking the town and the "broad,
open, elevated valley" in which it lay. Hood and Polk fell back to there,
followed prudently by Schofield, who by now had notified Sherman of
the snare he had so narrowly avoided, and Hardee came up that after-
noon to take position on their left, closely pursued by Thomas and
McPherson, the latter having closed the gap between him and the
Cumberlanders in the course of the daylong skirmish, first north, then
east of Kingston. Before sundown the guns of both armies were banging
away at each other, arching their shots above the hill-cradled streets
and rooftops of the village. Despite the dismay of the townspeople at
this harrowing turn of events ("Consternation of citizens," a staff
lieutenant jotted in his diary; "many flee, leaving all; some take away
few effects, some remain between hostile fires") Johnston was greatly
pleased with his new position, later referring to it as "the best I saw
occupied during the war."
Polk and Hood did not agree with this assessment, and they said as
much that evening when they came to headquarters for the council of
war to which they had been summoned. Protesting that Union batteries
Red Clay Minuet [ 343 ]
enfiladed that portion of the ridge where their lines joined, they liked
the position so little, in fact, that both wanted to leave it at the earliest
possible moment. The army had no choice, they said, except to schedule
a dawn attack, on the chance of beating Sherman to the punch, or else to
fall back tonight across the Etowah. Johnston did not want to do either:
certainly not attack the reunited Federals with no better promise of
success than the tactical situation seemed to him to afford. Hardee, who
arrived at this point in the discussion, sided altogether with his chief,
hoping like him that Sherman would oblige them tomorrow by exposing
his superior numbers to severe and sudden curtailment by advancing
them head-on across that broad, open valley to challenge the defenders
on the wooded ridge.
Johnston ended by deciding to retreat. He did so, he explained
later, not because he agreed with Hood and Polk that the position had
its drawbacks, but "in the belief that the confidence of the commanders
of two of the three corps of the army, of their inability to resist the
enemy, would inevitably be communicated to their troops, and produce
that inability."
The fall-back to the Etowah that night, though Sherman made
no attempt to interfere, was by far the most disruptive of the campaign.
"All hurried off without regard to order," the young staff diarist re-
corded. "Reach Cartersville before day, troops come in after day. Gen-
eral Johnston comes up — all hurried over bridges; great confusion
caused by mixing trains and by trains which crossed first parking at
river's edge and others winding around wrong roads."
Much of the mixup was a manifestation of the army's chagrin at
the two-step disappointment it had suffered, first in the cancellation of
the attack, which came hard on the heels of the reading of Old Joe's
"I lead you to battle" address — "I could not restrain my tears when I
found we could not strike," Mackall confessed in a home letter — and
then in the directive, which came down that night, for a resumption of
the southward march. "Change of line not understood but thought all
right," the diarist put it, "but night retreat after issuing general order
impaired confidence; great alarm in country round. Troops think no
stand to be made north of Chattahoochee, where supply train is sent."
Civilians north and immediately south of the Etowah reacted to their
abandonment much as the people of Cassville had done the day before,
milling about like ants in an upset ant hill. Johnston put the blame, or
anyhow most of it, on Hood, and so did members of his staff, including
the diarist, who wrote: "One lieutenant general talks about attack and
not giving ground, publicly, and quietly urges retreat."
By way of consolation for its woes, the disgruntled army could
see for itself the strength of its new position near Allatoona, four miles
down the Western & Atlantic from the river. Here, beginning the day
of their arrival, May 20, Johnston had his soldiers throw up breastworks
[344] THE CIVIL WAR^ 1864
commanding the deep, narrow gorge through which the railroad snaked
its way, his flanks protected, left and right, by Pumpkin Vine and
Allatoona creeks. Fifteen miles to the south, his new supply base was
Marietta, just beyond Kennesaw Mountain, about midway between the
Etowah and the Chattahoochee, last of the three main rivers between
Chattanooga and Atlanta.
Allatoona Pass, as the gorge through this spur of the Appalachians
was called, was a still more "terrible door of death" than Buzzard Roost
had been, some sixty miles to the north. Paradoxically, though, it was
precisely in this abundance of natural strength that the strategic weak-
ness of the position lay. Sherman would be even less apt to call for a
main effort here than he had been at Rocky Face Ridge. His solution, now
as then, would most likely be to try another sidle — and there was always
the danger that, sooner or later, one or another of these complicated flank
maneuvers would succeed in accomplishing its purpose of placing the
superior blue army squarely between the Confederates and Atlanta; in
which case Johnston would have no choice except to attack the Federals
where they were, intrenched and waiting, or scatter into the surrounding
hills. Either course would mean the loss not only of the campaign (mean-
ing Atlanta) but also of the army, whether by destruction or disintegra-
tion, the difference being that one would be somewhat less sudden than
the other. All Johnston could do, in the way of attempting to forestall
such a calamity, was alert Wheeler to be on the lookout for the first
sign of another sidle, up or down the Etowah. He felt sure that one was
pending, but he could not move to thwart it until he knew its direction,
right or left.
One other thing he could attempt, however, and that was to pro-
tect himself from his detractors, in some measure at least, by putting his
performance in the best possible light for his Richmond superiors, with
emphasis on his desire for coming to grips with his pursuer. Since this
latest retreat had no doubt set his critics' teeth on edge, he no sooner
crossed the Etowah than he got off a wire to the President explaining the
cancellation of the "general attack" he had ordered yesterday: "While
the officer charged with the lead was advancing he was deceived by a
false report that a heavy column of the enemy had turned our right and
was close upon him, and took a defensive position. When the mistake
was discovered it was too late to resume the movement." Despite this
disappointment, which had obliged him to continue the withdrawal, he
pointed out that he had "kept near [Sherman] to prevent his detaching
to Virginia, as you directed, and have repulsed every attack he has
made."
Next day, May 21, the army having spent the night improving
its position near Allatoona, still with no sign of what the Federals were
up to, he followed through with another message along similar lines. "In
the last six days the enemy has pressed us back to this point, thirty-two
Red Clay Minuet [ 345 ]
miles," he conceded, but he assured Davis that, all this time, "I have
earnestly sought an opportunity to strike." The trouble was that Sher-
man, by constantly extending his right as he moved down the railroad,
had obliged the defenders to give ground no less constantly, and then,
"by fortifying the moment he halted," had also "made an assault upon
his superior forces too hazardous." Without committing himself to any-
thing specific — as, indeed, he could scarcely be expected to do, under
the circumstances outlined here — Johnston wanted the Commander in
Chief to know that he was in full agreement as to the need for going
over to the offensive at the earliest possible moment. Meantime, despite
the discouragements generally involved in making a lengthy retrograde
movement, he was pleased to report that the slightness of his losses from
straggling or desertion showed that the army was in good shape for such
exertions as he might presently require.
The answer came not from Davis — not just yet — but from
Bragg, who combined good news with bad and wound up with a flourish
that seemed to indicate that the Georgia commander perhaps had over-
sold his case. Another brigade of infantry from Mobile and a regiment of
South Carolina cavalry were on their way to join him, but these were
the last the government would be sending.
"From the high condition in which your army is reported," the
message ended, "we confidently rely on a brilliant success."
Johnston's concern, lest the very strength of his Allatoona position
deprive him of the quick defensive victory he felt certain he would
score if his adversary could only be persuaded to attack him there, was
better founded than he knew. Two decades back, as a young artillery
lieutenant on detached duty at Marietta with the inspector general,
Sherman "rode or walked, exploring creeks, valleys, hills" in the sur-
rounding region, while his less energetic comrades "spent their leisure
Sundays reading novels, card-playing, or sleeping." Now this seemingly
useless pastime stood him in good stead. "Twenty years later the thing
that helped me to win battles in Georgia was my perfect knowledge of
the country. I knew more of Georgia than the rebels did." In the course
of his rambles, sketch pad in hand, he had spent several days investigat-
ing some Indian mounds on the south bank of the Etowah, just north of
the gorge where Johnston was intrenched, and "I therefore knew that
the Allatoona Pass was very strong, would be hard to force, and resolved
not even to attempt it, but to turn the position."
First, though, he would call a halt, a brief time-out from war; the
combat troops would take a welcome three-day rest ("to replenish and
fit up," he explained to Halleck) while Colonel W. W. Wright and his
2000 nimble rail repairmen, having rebuilt the Resaca bridge in jig
time, put the Western & Atlantic back in operation down to Kingston.
34^]
THE CIVIL WAR
1864
"The dead were buried, the sick and wounded were made more com-
fortable, and everybody got his mail and wrote letters," one appreciative
officer would recall. Then on May 23, with twenty days' rations in his
wagons, Sherman was ready to cut loose from the railroad and strike out
cross-country with everything he had.
His preliminary objective on this all-out flanking operation was
Dallas, a road-hub settlement just under twenty miles west of Marietta
and about the same distance southwest of Allatoona, where Johnston
would be left holding the bag unless he pulled back in time to meet this
massive threat to his new supply base, fifteen miles down the track in
his rear. As usual, Thomas would take the direct central route, south
from Kingston through Euharlee and Stilesboro, while Schofleld
marched on his left, by way of Burnt Hickory, and McPherson swung
well to the right, through Van Wert, to approach Dallas from the west.
The march would be a rigorous one, Sherman knew from previous ex-
ploration, "as the country was very obscure, mostly in a state of nature,
densely wooded and with few roads." It might take longer than he
-*- McPherson crossed
three mi ies downstream
Mcpherson
Powder Sprinqs,
Milts
Red Clay Minuet [ 347 ]
planned: in which case, he told Halleck, his twenty-day rations could
be stretched to thirty. But he was not inclined to worry much as he set
out from Kingston, riding with Thomas across the Etowah; "the
Rubicon of Georgia," he called that river in a dispatch sent just after
he gave the jump-off signal. "We are now all in motion like a vast hive
of bees," he declared, fairly buzzing with pleasure at being once more
on the go, "and expect to swarm along the Chattahoochee in five days."
So he said. But when Schofield captured a lone gray rider at
Burnt Hickory next day and found on him a dispatch which showed
Johnston already reacting to this latest turning movement, Sherman not
only knew that secrecy had gone by the board, along with all hope
for a substantial head start in the projected five-day sprint for the
Chattahoochee; he also perceived that "it accordingly became necessary
to use great caution, lest some of the minor columns should fall into
ambush," as Schofield had so nearly done, four days ago, near Cassville.
Caution was indeed called for, he found out the following morn-
ing, May 25, when Thomas pressed down in advance of the other two
armies for a crossing of Pumpkin Vine Creek. Hooker had the lead,
driving butternut cavalry pickets over a bridge which they set on fire
just as the first of his three divisions came in sight. He doused the flames,
double-timed across, and continued his pursuit of the skittery horsemen.
Four miles northeast of Dallas, near a Methodist meeting-house called
New Hope Church, he came under fire from a mass of rebel infantry
whose march he had apparently interrupted. With soldierly instinct, and
as if determined to justify his nom de guerre, Fighting Joe shook out a
line of skirmishers and attacked with his lead division, commanded by
Brigadier General John W. Geary, a six-foot six-inch Pennsylvanian
who had been San Francisco's first mayor and a territorial governor of
Kansas. A colonel in the Mexican War before he was thirty, he now was
forty-four and had seen much fighting, East and West, including
Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, Wauhatchie and Chattanooga, but in
none of these had he and his men found harder work than was required
of them in the next three hours around New Hope Church, which the
attackers ever afterwards referred to as the "Hell Hole."
What Geary struck, and promptly rebounded from, was Hood.
His corps had been last of the three to leave Allatoona the day before,
when Johnston, warned by Wheeler that Sherman was off on another
sidle, marched southwest up the near bank of Pumpkin Vine Creek to
intercept him around Dallas. Hardee was there now, with Polk in posi-
tion on his right to connect with Hood near New Hope Church; so that
what Hooker had encountered was not a mere segment of Johnston's
army on the march, as he first thought, but the entire right wing of that
army, already beginning to scratch out intrenchments in expectation of
his arrival hard on the heels of the cavalry pickets fading back before
him through what Sherman called "the obscurity of the ambushed
[348] THE CIVIL WAR^1864
country." Undaunted by the truth, which he began to suspect as soon
as Geary was flung back, Hooker brought up his other two divisions,
led by Butterfield and Brigadier General Alpheus Williams, massed
them on a front no wider than Geary had spanned alone, and sent them
forward, closely packed, against the rebel center. As a result, Major
General Alexander P. Stewart's division caught the brunt of the all-out
blue attack, some 20,000 strong. Known to his soldiers as "Old Straight,"
the nickname he had acquired while teaching mathematics at West Point
and at Cumberland University in his home state of Tennessee, Stewart
was forty-two and a veteran of all the army's battles, a strict discipli-
narian much admired by his men, who gave him today all he asked of
them, and more: especially the artillerists, whose guns were advanta-
geously sited to exact a heavy toll from the charging bluecoats. Hooker's
three divisions could make no headway against this one, despite two
hours of trying without pause. Hood's other two divisions, under Major
Generals Thomas Hindman and Carter Stevenson, had little to do on the
left and right of the sector being assaulted, but when Johnston himself,
alarmed by the desperate nature of the struggle, sent to ask Stewart if
he needed reinforcements, the Tennessean replied calmly: "My own
troops will hold the position."
Still another hour of such fighting remained, and it was this third
hour, even more than the previous two, that prompted the Hell Hole
description of the scene. Thunder rumbled and lightning crackled from
a huge black cloud that gathered above the crossroad, dwarfing the boom
of guns and the flicker of muzzle flashes, then loosed its torrential burden
with all the abruptness of a water-filled bag split open, drenching men
already wet with sweat from heat and exertion, whether prone behind
log barricades or scrambling through bullet- and rain-whipped brush.
"No more persistent attack or determined resistance was anywhere
made," Stewart was to report with impartial praise. Thunderstorm and
fighting came to a simultaneous end as the cloud blew off and the sun
went down in a glory of red and purple beyond Dallas and the mountains
to the west. Hooker put his casualties at 1665 killed or wounded, but the
Confederates, knowing his reputation for understating his own losses
while overestimating those of his opponent, were convinced the figure
was much too low, since they themselves, fighting mostly behind cover,
had lost nearly half that many in the course of the three-hour contest.
Darkness made the go 
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